Relationship between Memory and Modality of Stimulus Presentation

Abstract

Memory is the mental faculty that encodes, stores and retrieves information. Recall is the third stage involved in memory. It is influenced by both internal and external variables including stimulus presentation modality. Researchers in the past have compared recall for words presented across the auditory and visual modality, claiming one to be superior to the other. The present study aimed to compare the recall abilities for visual (pictures) and auditory (words) modalities in neurotypical younger and older adults. Based on age, the participants were divided into two groups comprising of 20 participants each. The first group comprised of participants aged 18–25 years and the second group comprised of participants aged 60–80 years. Pictures presented in the visual modality and words presented in auditory modality served as the stimuli for the study. The task of participants was to recall six pictures presented in a sequence and recall a word string comprising of six items presented in the auditory modality. As proven earlier, recall was superior for younger participants as compared to older participants. Recall was also found to be better for words presented in the auditory modality as compared to pictures for both groups. However, the difference was statistically significant only for the second group, indicating that visual attention would be relatively more affected compared to auditory attention. The study can be extended to the cognitively impaired population to understand if the recall varies as a function of stimuli property and modality of presentation.

Keywords: Recall, modality, aging

Cite this Article

Malavi Srikar, Abhishek BP. Relationship between Memory and Modality of Stimulus Presentation. Research & Reviews: Journal of Computational Biology. 2018; 7(2): 42–45p