Modality Effects in Immediate Recall of Verbal and Non-verbal Information

Abstract

Immediate serial recall performance was compared for sound-producing objects represented by (1) their spoken name, (2) their typical sound, (3) their written name or (4) their picture. R ecency was largest for the spoken lists, intermediate for the sounds, and almost non-existent for print and pictures. Experiment 2 used a speech or auditory non-speech suffix to investigate the nature of the recency effects. A spoken suffix interfered with recency of spoken material, but not with that of non-speech sounds; an auditory non-speech suffix did not interfere with speech or with non-speech. Taken together, these two experiments highlight the special status of spoken input as well as that of auditory information.