The fidelity of visual and auditory memory

Abstract

Recent studies show that recognition memory for pictures is consistently better than recognition memory for sounds. The purpose of this experiment was to compare the fidelity of auditory and visual memory to better understand the reported differences in the two memory systems. Participants received a study phase with pictures/sounds, followed by a same-day memory test or a delayed recognition memory test. During the memory test, participants were presented with pictures/sounds that were old (presented during study), novel foils not presented during study, or exemplar foils that were variants of objects presented during study. Participants were instructed to classify each picture/sound as Bold^or Bnew^by pressing a corresponding key. The same-day memory task revealed fundamental differences in visual and auditory memory: auditory representations are coarse and gistbased, while visual representations are highly detailed. However, auditory and visual memory performance was similar after a delay of 2 and 7 days and both types of memory representations were more coarse and gist-based. The results make an important contribution to our understanding of how the world is represented in auditory and visual memory.

A Functional MRI Paradigm for Efficient Mapping of Memory Encoding Across Sensory Conditions

“…This has also been found in a working memory study on isolated and parallel retention of auditory (vocal) and visual (abstract objects) information (Saults and Cowan, 2007). Together with the finding from Gloede and Gregg (Gloede and Gregg, 2019) that visual memory is more hindered by a delayed recall than auditory memory, this suggests that auditory encoding might be more difficult but relatively robust. One explanation for the robustness of auditory encoding over the presentation conditions might also be related to the noisy scanner environment, creating continuously higher demands on auditory processing during both presentation conditions, as discussed above.…”

“…behavioral work that indicated better memory performance for visual scenes than for any kind of auditory stimuli (Cohen et al, 2009). In general, visual stimuli are more often remembered and with more detail in comparison with auditory memory, if recalled immediately (Thelen et al, 2015;Gloede and Gregg, 2019). However, after a time delay, auditory memories are more stable than visual memory (Gloede and Gregg, 2019).…”

“…In general, visual stimuli are more often remembered and with more detail in comparison with auditory memory, if recalled immediately (Thelen et al, 2015;Gloede and Gregg, 2019). However, after a time delay, auditory memories are more stable than visual memory (Gloede and Gregg, 2019). This may imply that it may be more difficult to encode auditory than visual stimuli.…”

“…This might have reduced the size of the effect of additional between-modality parallel processing for the auditory stimuli. A second explanation could be that learning auditory stimuli in similar detail as visual memory is more difficult and takes more attentional effort (Gloede and Gregg, 2019). Therefore, parallel conditions that demand more attention influence auditory information less than visual memory.…”

Differential associations of visual memory with hippocampal subfields in subjective cognitive decline and amnestic mild cognitive impairment

“…However, most studies have focused on verbal episodic memory while ignoring visual episodic memory. Visual recognition memory performance was always found better than auditory recognition memory performance [ 20 ]. However, one study found visual memory decreased for days, while auditory memory was more resistant to information loss over time substantially [ 21 ].…”