1. Effect of Modality on Short Term Memory Shannon Hooven Sarah Kamplain Abby Ramser

2. INTRO Memory: the way in which information is represented and stored cognitively. Peterson and Peterson found that there is a distinction between various types of memory.  If information is not rehearsed, it will not be remembered or capable of being retrieved for later recall.  Hamilton argued that the capacity of short-term memory was seven units.  Baddeley argued that the span of memory is determined by the speed at which information is rehearsed. Proposed that for verbal material, people had an articulatory loop in which they can maintain as much information as they are able to rehearse in a fixed period of time.

3. INTRO cont. Webster (1980) hypothesized that the organization of memories in short term memory is enhanced by the characteristics assigned to them as a result of the modality in which they were presented and the required response type. Thompson and Clayton (1974) found that when information was presented in an auditory modality, recall drastically declined as the delay increased.

4. HYPOTHESES Current research proposes the way in which stimuli are presented to participants will affect the way in which they recall the information.  If stimuli are presented in a visual modality, recall will be better if they are required to write down the words (i.e. visual – visual).  If stimuli are presented orally, they will be better recalled if participants are required to speak them back to the researcher (i.e. auditory – auditory).

5. METHOD Participants  18 participants ranging in age from 18-22 6 Males 12 Females Equipment  Gateway computer with an Intel Pentium 4 processor and a EV700 monitor  Microsoft Power Point

6. METHOD cont. Stimuli  One-syllable words ranging from three to five letters each  66 size Times New Roman black font on a white background in the center of the screen  Experimenters read the list Each of the lists was comprised of seven words The words were presented three seconds apart.

7. METHOD cont. Procedure  Informed Consent  First task: visual-visual  Second task: visual-auditory  Third task: auditory-visual  Fourth task: auditory-auditory  Conditions were counter-balanced  Debriefing

8. VISUAL STIMULI List 1 Fish Eye Shoe Bone Leaf Dog Nose List 2 Belt Cat Ice Rug Tree Lamp Sock

9. AUDITORY STIMULI List 1 Hair Bird Fire Cake Ear Boat Cloud List 2 Chair Hat Bed Dog Wall Cup Ring

10. RESULTS Means visual - visual visual - auditory auditory - visual auditory - auditory 6.3368064.8819445.7361115.520833

11. RESULTS cont.

12. Significant main effect found for responses in written form (F(18) = 13.35, p < 0). Significant interaction found between the visual presentation of stimuli and the written response (F (18) = 3.13, p <.03). Trend toward the oral response being significant for the condition in which stimuli were presented orally.

13. DISCUSSION Results indicated that information was better remembered when presented visually.  This could be because of the overwhelming and constant exposure to written text in a variety of settings (i.e. school, media, etc.) Responses in the auditory modality could have been inhibited as a result of the way in which the words were read.  Timing in between words and pronunciation