Modality effects in free recall

Abstract

Three experiments compared auditory and visual presentation in single-trial free recall. Experiment I used 20-word auditory or visual lists; Experiment II used mixed lists either 10-10, 2-10-8, 5-5-5-5, or random; Experiment III used 10-word lists either auditory, visual, or random. Modality affected the recency part of the serial position curve but not the asymptote, mixed-list presentation greatly magnified the auditory superiority, and the order of recall was organized by mode of presentation. The results seemed clearly inconsistent with a Sperling-type one-store model and somewhat at variance with the Morton logogen model. Instead it was reaffirmed that there are separate prelinguistic auditory and visual short-term stores which may have persistence at least as long as 5–10 sec.