Experience and information loss in auditory and visual memory

Abstract

Recent studies show that recognition memory for sounds is inferior to memory for pictures. Four experiments were conducted to examine the nature of auditory and visual memory. Experiments 1-3 were conducted to evaluate the role of experience in auditory and visual memory. Participants received a study phase with pictures/sounds, followed by a recognition memory test. Participants then completed auditory training with each of the sounds, followed by a second memory test. Despite auditory training in Experiments 1 and 2, visual memory was superior to auditory memory. In Experiment 3, we found that it is possible to improve auditory memory, but only after 3 days of specific auditory training and 3 days of visual memory decay. We examined the time course of information loss in auditory and visual memory in Experiment 4 and found a trade-off between visual and auditory recognition memory: Visual memory appears to have a larger capacity, while auditory memory is more enduring. Our results indicate that visual and auditory memory are inherently different memory systems and that differences in visual and auditory recognition memory performance may be due to the different amounts of experience with visual and auditory information, as well as structurally different neural circuitry specialized for information retention.

The fidelity of visual and auditory memory

“…The results of our delayed memory test in Experiments 3 and 4 were consistent with previous research demonstrating that there is substantially more visual information loss than auditory information loss over the course of time (Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017), and as a result, performance on the two memory tests is similar after a delay. Our measure of the fidelity of auditory and visual memory representations indicated that auditory memory is more resistant to information loss because auditory representations are initially stored in a conceptual-based manner with relatively low fidelity.…”

“…In this study, we compared the fidelity of auditory and visual memory, as well as the time course of information loss in the two memory types. Our results replicated the finding that visual recognition memory performance is better than auditory recognition memory performance (e.g., Bigelow & Poremba, 2014;Cohen, Horowitz, & Wolfe, 2009) and that the differences in auditory and visual memory become less apparent over time (Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017). More critically, however, the present study demonstrates why the difference between auditory and visual memory is apparent at a same-day memory test but not at a delay: the fidelity of visual memory is better than the fidelity of auditory memory.…”

“…Although previous research has revealed that the differences between auditory and visual memory are less apparent over time (Bigelow & Poremba, 2014;Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017), it is not clear why there are differences between auditory and visual memory on a same-day memory test but not at a delay. In this project, we address this issue by examining the resolution of auditory and visual memory as well as the time course of information loss in the two memory systems.…”

“…Although auditory recognition memory is consistently worse than visual recognition memory, auditory memory appears to be more resistant to information loss or to decay at a slower rate. In one recent study, visual and auditory recognition performance was compared at a same-day memory test and at a delayed test 2 days later (Gloede, Paulauskas, & Gregg, 2017). Visual recognition memory was superior on the same-day memory test; however, visual memory performance dropped substantially over the course of a couple of days.…”

Investigating orthographic versus auditory cross-situational word learning with online and lab-based research

“…Crucially, it may be that visual information is more salient due to the welldocumented advantage for visual over auditory memory (Cohen et al, 2009(Cohen et al, , 2011Gloede et al, 2017). Visual recognition memory has been shown to be very effective, with participants having impeccable accuracy on recall tests after learning large numbers of pictures (Brady et al, 2008;Shepard, 1967;Standing et al, 1970;Standing, 1974).…”