1
Modality and Recency Effects in Free Recall Jesse K. Pazdera & Michael J. Kahana University of Pennsylvania • Modality effect: Enhanced recency for auditory vs. visual items • Inverse-modality effect: Enhanced primacy for visual vs. auditory items (Murdock & Walker, 1969; Craik, 1969; Grenfell-Essam, Ward, & Tan, 2017) • Numerous potential explanations have been posited: • Greater capacity of auditory store (Murdock & Walker, 1969) • Auditory items more persistent in short-term store (Craik, 1969) • Temporal information better encoded for auditory items (Gardiner, 1983; Glenberg & Swanson, 1986) • Auditory items have higher-dimensional representations (Cowan, Saults, & Brown, 2004; Nairne, 1990; Nilsson, Wright, & Murdock, 1979) • Stronger associations among auditory items (Macken et al., 2016) • Goal: Lend support to one or more of these theories through a large-scale study of the modality effect in free recall. Background Methods Prior-List Intrusions • Inconsistent with STS accounts of the modality effect, our PFR results suggest that auditory presentation did not increase the accessibility of recency words. Results instead support an output interference account. • Differences in PLI recency may result from weaker temporal context for visual items, causing temporally-driven errors in the form of recent words intruding; feature-rich auditory lists may produce more distant, semantically-driven PLIs. • Reduced ability to rehearse during auditory presentation may account for the inverse-modality effect. This would explain the more pronounced effect in Experiment 1, if participants were more likely to attempt to rehearse auditory lists when they also received visual lists. Discussion References Contact Name: Jesse Pazdera Email: [email protected] Phone: (215) 595-3723 Cowan, N., Saults, J. S., & Brown, G. D. A. (2004). On the auditory modality superiority effect in serial recall: Separating input and output factors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 639–644. Craik, F. I. M. (1969). Modality effects in short-term storage. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 658–664. Gardiner, J. M. (1983). On recency and echoic memory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences, 302, 267–282. Glenberg, A. M., & Swanson, N. G. (1986). A temporal distinctiveness theory of recency and modality effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 3–15. Grenfell-Essam, R., Ward, G., & Tan, L. (2017). Common modality effects in immediate free recall and immediate serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(12), 1909-1933. Macken, B., Taylor, J. C., Kozlov, M. D., Hughes, R. W., & Jones, D. M. (2016). Memory as embodiment: The case of modality and serial short-term memory. Cognition, 155, 113–124. Murdock, B. B., Jr., & Walker, K. D. (1969). Modality effects in free recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 665–676. Nairne, J. S. (1990). A feature model of immediate memory. Memory & Cognition, 18, 251–269. Nilsson, L.-G., Wright, E., & Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1979). Order of recall, output interference and the modality effect. Psychological Research, 41, 63–78. Primacy Effect Recency Effect M Visual > Auditory*** (E 1,2 ) Auditory > Visual*** (E 1,2 ) LL Short > Long*** (E 1,2 ) Short > Long*** (E 1,2 ) PR Slow > Fast*** (E 1,2 ) Slow > Fast*** (E 1,2 ) M*LL n.s. n.s. M*PR Fast rate reduces M.E.** (E 1 ) Fast rate reduces M.E.* (E 1 ) LL*PR n.s. Long lists reduce P.R.E.*** (E 1,2 ) M*LL*PR n.s. n.s. Probability of First Recall (Final List Item) M n.s. LL Short > Long* (E 1 ) PR Slow > Fast*** (E 1,2 ) No significant interaction effects * p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001 • Two online immediate free recall experiments using Amazon Mechanical Turk • Manipulations: • Modality (M), List Length (LL), Presentation Rate (PR) • Experiment 1: 1100 participants, 8 visual and 8 auditory lists • Experiment 2: 2000 participants, 16 visual or 16 auditory lists • LL and PR varied within subjects in both experiments Temporal Clustering Factor M n.s. LL Long > Short*** (E 1,2 ) PR Slow > Fast** (E 2 ) No significant interaction effects *** Experiment 1 Experiment 2 Greater recency for PLIs on visual trials (*) Greater recency in visual task (**) Time Between Onsets: 1.6s – 2.0s or 2.4s – 2.8s Time Onscreen: 0.8s or 1.6s ISI 0.8s – 1.2s Visual Presentation Auditory Presentation Words Per List: 12 or 24 Free Recall: Typed responses “QUEEN” “APPLE” + 10s 1.5s … … 0.5s 60s 300s Countdown QUEEN APPLE ***** APPL Final Free Recall x16 Trials Modality Effect Inverse-Modality Effect Experiment 1 Experiment 2 Experiment 1 Plot shows recency performance normalized by the SPC asymptote Auditory presentation enhanced recency effects across all conditions n-5 n-4 n-3 n-2 n-1 n Serial Position 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Normalized Recall Prob. n-5 n-4 n-3 n-2 n-1 n Serial Position 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 Prob. of First Recall V A S-12 S-24 F-12 F-24 Modality did not affect the likelihood of initiating recall from final list items
