Effect of word meaningfulness on primary and secondary memory.

An experiment was carried out to determine the effects of mode of presentation (auditory or visual) and work meaningfulness on primary and secondary components of free recall (N = 80 female undergraduates). The results indicated that (a) word meaningfulness affected both primary and secondary memory, (b) visual presentation was superior to auditory presentation in secondary memory but auditory presentation was superior to visual presentation in primary memory (the modality effect), and (c) the modality effect was independent of word meaningfulness. It is suggested that there are modality-specific stores in primary memory, and that these stores can employ different forms of coding.