Capacity Differences in Processing and Storage of Auditory and Visual Input

Earlier research showing superior recall of auditorily as opposed to visually presented items (the modality effect) has essentially been interpreted in favor of either a one-store (processing theory) or a two-store theory (storage theory). Neither theory alone seems to be capable of accounting for all of the experimental findings in different sorts of experimental paradigms. In those cases in which list items have been presented in one modality only (single-mode presentation) a one-store theory has been found to be more suitable, while in those cases in which some items of a list have been presented auditorily and others visually (mixed-mode presentation) a two-store theory has been found to be more appropriate. In an attempt to resolve this theoretical inconsistency a theoretical synthesis between storage and processing theories was constructed and three experiments were conducted. The one- and two-store theories were supported in one experiment each, while the synthesis model gained support in all three experiment. Four other sets of data are discussed, which previously have caused problems for the one- and two-store theories. These data seemed to be consistent with the synthesis model. The main features of the synthesis model were postulated to be a general memory system containing modality-specific channels or stores and a central mechanism capable of processing the information in the modality-specific stores as well as the information in the rest of the memory system.