Effects of multisensory study on long-term memory for pictures and sounds

Studies have provided some evidence for a benefit of congruent multisensory study format on short-term recognition memory for pictures and sounds, even when the secondary modality is task-irrelevant. In long-term memory paradigms the evidence is mixed. In a series of 4 experiments, we used a study and recognition task to investigate the effect of multisensory study in long-term memory for pictures and sounds, when the secondary modality was either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. We found no evidence for multisensory benefits on recognition memory for pictures irrespective of whether the auditory modality was task-relevant or not and a benefit of multisensory study on recognition memory for sounds only when the visual modality was task-irrelevant. Across experiments, recognition memory for pictures was superior to recognition memory for sounds. Our results suggest that multisensory benefits may be restricted to sounds because sound is cognitively less salient than vision.