Modality Effect
The finding that how information is presented — visually, audibly, or otherwise — affects how well it's learned and remembered. The medium shapes the message.
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Origin
The modality effect emerged from memory research in the 1960s. Psychologists Robert G. Crowder and John Morton introduced the Precategorical Acoustic Storage (PAS) model in 1969 to explain why auditorily-presented items show better recall than visually-presented items, particularly for the last few items in a list. The PAS model proposed that echoic memory persists longer than iconic memory, allowing auditory information privileged access to short-term recall—an effect sometimes called the "auditory recency effect."
Updated June 15, 2019