The Impact of Visuals on Short-Term Memory Recall
ISEF · 2025 Behavioral and Social Sciences
Overview
The purpose of this study was to assess how visual information impacts the accuracy of short-term memory recall. As memory is an essential human function, the project aimed to examine how to optimize the recall of memory by investigating the relationship between visuals and short-term memory recall accuracy with auditory information. It was hypothesized that the presence of auditory information with accompanying visuals would correlate with more accurate recall of short-term memory compared to the accuracy of questions without accompanying visuals (only auditory information). There were 39 participants in this study who completed a four question short-term memory test with auditory information either with or without accompanying visual pictures of the scenario. A significant positive correlation was found between short-term memory recall accuracy and the presence of visual information with a 23.9% difference in average recall accuracy of questions with visuals (75.3% accuracy) versus without (51.5% accuracy). The findings in this study show the importance of visuals in short-term memory recall and could be used to improve educational environments and everyday processes.
Competition history
- ISEF 2025
Resources
Related projects
CSEF · 2002
Auditory and Visual Short-Term Memory: Evaluation of Learning Strengths
CSEF · 2005
Is a Picture Really Worth a Thousand Words?
CSEF · 2005
Is A Picture Really Worth 1,000 Words?
CSEF · 2002
Will Using Additional Stimuli to Reinforce Ten Words Enhance Short-Term Memory Recall?
CSEF · 2006
Factors Affecting Adolescents' Short-Term Memory
CSEF · 2007
Memory Lane: A Visualization Study on Short Term Memory
CSEF · 2003
Pictorial Devices and Their Ability to Mnemonically Enhance the Human Memory
CSEF · 2013
Does a Compound Stimulus Improve Students' Memory?
Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.
Browse more like this
Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair