Visual vs. Verbal processing: Concurrent maintenance, distraction, and individual differences

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2756169_(Table of

This study aimed to investigate the recognition of concurrently encoded visual and verbal information presented under visual or verbal distraction. In four studies, we manipulated the meaning (same vs. different) and modality (visual vs. verbal) of the memory items and examined recognition performance. Specifically, we focused on congruency effects for meaning and modality, and their interactions. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between memory performance and individual differences in visual and verbal processing. We hypothesized that visual processing is more powerful than verbal, and found evidence for superior visual over verbal memory, and a greater visual disruptive effect. Next,we found congruency effects in meaning, that is meaning matching between the memory items improved their recognition, and in modality, that is memory decreased when the processed items shared the same modality. Further, we found partial support for the combined effects of meaning and modality congruency. Meaning incongruency reduced the recognition accuracy most when the distractor and maintained items’ modalities were matching. We found that modality congruency impeded memory more when meaning was also incongruent. However, this combined effect was observed mostly for visual modality and accuracy measures. We did not find consistent and strong associations between memory performance and existing assessments of individual differences. However, for our memory task, we found correlations between efficiency in processing visual and verbal distractors and relevant recognition performance.