Sketching: The Effect of a Dual-Modality Technique on Recall Performance.

The recall of an episodic narrative, as a function of presentation modality (audio-visual sketch, audio-only), was examined across three cumulative experiments. Experiment 1: participants (N = 84) were asked to recall a narrative delivered via audio, or audio accompanied by a sketch. Experiment 2: participants (N = 116) were asked to recall a narrative delivered via sketch or audio-only format, both of which varied in duration/number of details to recall. Experiment 3: participants (N = 173) recalled a narrative that varied by modality (audio-only, non-concurrent sketch, hybrid sketch, concurrent sketch) and access/no access to the sketch during recall. Aggregating the data across the three experiments (mini meta-analysis) revealed that participants provided with sketch-based narratives recalled more information and had higher recall accuracy (M_d = 0.80 [95% CI = 0.56, 1.04], Z = 6.51, p < 0.001) than those provided with audio-only narratives. The results also revealed that concurrent sketches led to the best recall of a narrative, and having access to the sketch during recall had minimal impact on recall. The potential implications of the results for recalling information in various contexts are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]