Visual vs Auditory Encoding of Linguistic Material in Comparison of Sentences and Pictures

Abstract

The present study was designed to determine if there is a facilitating effect of aural vs visual linguistic input in comprehension of a sentence which expresses a spatial relationship between objects in a picture, e.g., "Star is above square." The sample was composed of 10 male and 10 female undergraduate students in psychology. One group was presented with sentences aurally to compare with tachistoscopically presented pictures, while another was presented written sentences along with pictures. The main finding was that reaction times were significantly less in the auditory group than the visual group, while there was no statistically significant difference in errors. Several previous findings relating to the characteristics of sentence types were replicated. It was concluded that several alternative strategies are made possible when stimuli are presented aurally which are probably due to the compatibility of listening and looking tasks.