Effect of multimodal stimulus presentation on recall

This study was conducted to investigate how the mode of stimulus presentation affects recall in the classroom environment. 289 undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of 7 experimental groups. All subjects were presented the same stimuli in one of 7 possible modes: (1) Printed Word, (2) Spoken Word, (3) Picture, (4) Printed Word + Spoken Word, (5) Picture + Spoken Word, (6) Picture + Printed Word, and (7) Printed Word, Picture + Spoken Word. 30 words, 6 from each of 5 categories, were presented to each group. A new stimulus was presented every 5 sec. Subjects were to recall (in writing) as many stimuli as possible in 5 min. regardless of order. One-way between groups analyses of variance were conducted on recall and cluster index scores. A significant main effect of mode of presentation showed that recall was best for the Picture or multimodal group (Printed Word, Picture + Spoken Word). Groups receiving only the spoken or printed word showed significantly poorer recall than the multimodal groups. No statistically significant differences between groups were found on the cluster index score. It appears that the simultaneous presentation of redundant stimuli in multiple modalities does support the multiple-resource hypothesis by displaying enhanced recall when information is available from multiple attentional resources.