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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Measuring Attention and Visual Processing Speed by Model-based Analysis of Temporal-order Judgments
Published on: January 23, 2017
Auditory and temporal factors in the modality effect
Abstract:
Subjects in five experiments read nine-digit memory lists from a cathode ray tube for immediate recall. Reading aloud always produced a localized and reliable advantage for the last item, compared to reading silently. Two experiments on whispered and mouthed lists, with or without simultaneous broadband noise, falsified expectations derived from the theory of precategorical acoustic storage. Three additional experiments showed no enhancement of recency in the silent conditions when the digits were drawn or spelled gradually on the screen, a result that is inconsistent with the changing-state hypothesis. The classic auditory-visual modality effect is large and reliable, but still poorly understood.
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