Age-related differences on cognitive overload in an audio-visual memory task

Murray, Jennifer; Thomson, Mary E.

Abstract

The present study aimed to provide evidence outlining whether the type of stimuli used in teaching would provoke differing levels of recall across three different academic age groups. One hundred and twenty-one participants, aged 11–25 years, were given a languagebased memory task in the form of a wordlist consisting of 15 concrete and 15 abstract words, presented either visually, acoustically, or a combination of both audio and visual presentation. The study found that the presence of cognitive overload was greater in the older academic age participants than in the younger groups and that as academic experience increased, the visual presentation of the target stimuli produced greater levels of recall than was the case with acoustic and audio-visual presentation. Overall the findings indicate that cognitive overload increases with age, as the younger-age groups were found to have significantly higher levels of word recall in the audio-visual condition than the older groups.

Citation

Murray, J., & Thomson, M. E. (2011). Age-related differences on cognitive overload in an audio-visual memory task. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 26(1), 129-141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-010-0032-7

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Jun 25, 2010
• Publication Date: 2011-03
• Deposit Date: Feb 16, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 16, 2015
• Print ISSN: 0256-2928
• Electronic ISSN: 1878-5174
• Publisher: BMC
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 26
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 129-141
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-010-0032-7
• Keywords: Cognitive overload; Audio-visual memory; Recall; Ageing
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/7572
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10212-010-0032-7
• Contract Date: Feb 16, 2015