Running head: THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

Literature review on the theories behind the picture superiority effect

MSTU 4088
Santiago Caride
Teachers College, Columbia University
Spring 2016

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

Introduction
The development of learning techniques demand new research in both the tools and processes in
which the teaching and learning process takes places. Regarding this theme, there is a lot of
literature on how do people learn and which are the best way to ensure a good teaching. Among
other variables the teaching and learning process involves the ability to understand and retain
information, actions that are related and cannot be isolated one from another. The research on
retention suggest that the ability of our memory to recall information is better when it is
associated with a picture. This effect is called the picture superiority effect and applies to both
recall and recognition. The purpose of the paper is to compare the theories that tried to explain
this phenomenon and their consequences in education.
Previous considerations
Considering the basic process of learning, both words and pictures are firstly perceived as
physical objects, even when the words are perceived as sounds instead of visually. The
experience links this perception with former information. This information may not be contained
in the perception; thus words can be called arbitrary signs. For example, the signs on the streets
are the result of human convention in which "I" stands for information, a red light means stop
and green one go on. Some of the signs can have a natural link, i. e. the smoke is natural sign of
fire, but we never confuse one with the other. A language is a set of arbitrary symbols to
represent things, ideas and emotions, and these things that are represented can be reached by
different way such as pictures or words. The difference between this two paths, if there is any,
can tell us which is faster, promotes a better understanding and a long-lasting retention.
Therefore, its consideration its crucial for the teaching and learning process.

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

Exceptions to the PSE

The study of the effect of pictures in retention capacity it dates back to 1894 when E. Kirkpatrick
wrote in An experimental study of memory that "the fact that mental images of objects are
remembered better than their names is of great pedagogical significance." There is then, a long
tradition of research and investigation in this phenomenon. The results of memory retention in
recognition are higher than in recall, reaching 90% of accuracy in test taken with several days of
difference. Some research (F. T. Durso and M. K. Johnson, 1980) suggest that certain conditions
must be required for this superiority. Their study states that the superiority is not an invariant
result and may depend on the mode that the information is presented. The explanation they give
is that pictures may be remembered more than words because they have more distinctive sensory
codes and they are more likely to undergo semantic processing than words do. The picture
superiority effect is present only when they are oriented towards a verbal label and not to an
underlying referent. On the other hand, when the subject was induced to consider the concept as
a line drawing per se the results words could be recognized better and recalled equally often.
Some investigators suggest that the information about the cognitive operations done at the input
are preserved in memory. When pictorial information is created in response to a verbal input the
memory will include more information concerning cognitive operation rather than when that
information is produced implicitly. "So, deciding that a knife is used to cut with will create a
memory trace containing sensory information relevant to the object even if the word, and not the
object, served as the stimulus for the decision. Similarly, the trace resulting from imaging a knife
will contain sensory information. However, in the latter case, the trace contains the additional
information that the sensory information was generated and not perceived" (Durso & Johnson,
1980).

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

Another theory that questions (Weldon, M. S. & Roediger, H. L, 1987) the superiority effect
posits that the type of retrieval query determines whether pictures or words will exhibit superior
retention. The change of retrieval from free recall to word fragment completion favored the
memorization of words over pictures. The authors state that "These results can be interpreted on
the assumption that a free recall test is more conceptually driven (more sensitive to conceptual
components of the memory trace), whereas the word fragment completion test is more datadriven (relies more heavily on the match of surface features between study and test stimuli).
Thus, the word fragment completion test favors word over picture study because, when words
are read, there is greater overlap between the surface features of the study event and the word
fragment."
Models to explain relations between perceptions and memory
There have been different explanations to the picture superiority effect. According to Paivio
(1971) cognition involves the activity of two distinct subsystems: a verbal system specialized for
dealing directly with language; and a nonverbal (imagery) system specialized for dealing with
nonlinguistic objects and events. Paivio introduces the idea that both systems are composed of
units called logogens and imagens, respectively, that are initiated when the person thinks or
recognizes words or things. The verbal system deals directly with linguistic input while also
serving a symbolic function with respect to non-verbal input, which has direct access only to a
non-verbal (or imagery) system. The representations are connected with the sensory perceptions
and expression, so that the can work independently or cooperatively and does not require
consciousness to be experienced.
One hypothesis is that nonverbal and verbal codes, being functionally independent, can have
additive effects on recall. For example, participants in free recall experiments are likely to name

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

presented objects covertly and thus create a nonverbal (pictorial) and a verbal memory trace.
They can also set up a dual verbal-nonverbal memory trace by imaging to concrete words, but
this is somewhat less likely than naming pictures, hence the lower memory for concrete words
than pictures. Abstract words are difficult to image and hence are least likely to be dually coded.
The expected additive memory benefit of dual coding has been confirmed in numerous
experiments (e. g., Paivio, 1975; Paivio & Lambert, 1981), which also suggested that the
nonverbal code is mnemonically stronger (contributes more to the additive effect) than the verbal

code.
The other theory that explains the relation between perceptions uses a single code model where
words and picture converge. "It is possible [...] to instantiate the notion of "privileged
accessibility" in such a way as not require that the semantic system be organized into modalityspecific subsystems with exclusionary access from modality-congruent input representations.
This view assumes that a semantic representation may be accessed directly in its totality from
any of the input representations that are linked to it".

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

The processing of the two types of stimulus (words and pictures) has also been part of
neuroscience experimentation. Bright et al. (2004) findings support the single code model theory
based in scientific evidence: "We found evidence for a critical role of the anterior extent of the
fusiform gyrus (BA 37/20) in the representation of conceptual knowledge. This region does not
appear to be modulated by the modality of visual input (pictures or words), suggesting that it
holds unitary semantic representations formed via converging inputs from more posterior
areas". Another interesting result of this study is the findings regarding word-specific effects.
"Although the temporal poles activation was word-specific, we propose that these regions may
be involved in semantic representation in both modalities but that their engagement might be
primarily determined by the level of processing required for the task". This result reinforces the
theory of Durso and M. K. Johnson (1980) that subordinates the picture superiority effect to the
way in which the object is presented to the mind.

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

Perceptual and conceptual processing in memory

The varied features of pictures in comparison to words is being held as reason of this effect by
several investigators (Jacoby, 1983a). For example, the picture of a house can be plenty of
details: colors, sizes, dimensions, without missing its link with the concept of the house. In
contrast, the word may be more neat and simple in its expression. The characteristics of the
former example are an opportunity for a distinctive memory encoding.
In the dual-code theory of Paivio (1971) the format of perception is of crucial importance on the
way that perceptions will be recorded in memory. Nelson, Reed & McEvoy posit a semantic
store where the meanings of events are represented in a common code. The perceptual details of
the input are stored additionally. This former perception is the area in which picture throws
different result from words. There are some investigations that question this assumption about
the perceptual details as factors to enhance recognition. The addition of details in the picture did
not translate in better memory performance in recognition. Nelson, Th. et al. (1974) perform a
study in which they test the delayed recognition of photographs, verbal descriptions of the topic
in the photos, simple and basic drawings of the same topic, and -lastly- detailed drawings of the
photographs. Even when the pictorial representation excelled in memory recognition compared
to the results of the verbal description, they did not differ between each other in the accuracy for
recognition.
In addition, there is another study that questions the perceptual details as an argument to describe
the picture superiority effect. Kinjo and Snodgrass (2000) comparing within-form priming for
pictures and words. The effect in which self-generated words are better remembered than those
read is called generation effect. "According to the semantic activation theory, the generation
effect is attributed to the greater activation of an item's semantic attributes under generation than

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

under reading" (Kinjo and Snodgrass, 2000). The results demonstrated, that among the sources
for the generation effect, apart from an extra sensory activation there was also an extra semantic
activation and additional cognitive operations for generated pictures.
Moving from a perceptual argument towards a semantic reason we can assume that pictures are
processed semantically with a higher probability than words. This approach goes with the line of
Weldon and Roediger (1987) in which the retrieval task requires conceptual processing and each
perception encoded with more conceptual processing will be more likely retrieved. Pictures are
believed to require a more conceptual processing and thus they are better remembered than
words. This theory, that states that memory performance depends not just on the level of
processing but in the relation between the way the information it is encoded and retrieved is
called the transfer appropriate processing. An advantage of this theory is that it can explain the
reversal in the picture superiority effect in which the perceptual processing at study and test give
advantage to words over pictures due to the overlapped between study and test.
Research in this topic has been inconclusive to support the conceptual processing as the
advantage of pictures towards words. Even Weldon and Coyote (1996) made a study to test the
conceptual-processing advantage and found no support for it. They then sustained the idea that is
distinctiveness rather than conceptual processing the motive for the advantage.
The modelling theory
Recent studies used computational modelling to explain picture superiority effect. Following
Jacobys process dissociation procedure four studies were carried out to test explanations of
picture superiority effects previously found for several tasks.
In order to explain what is the process dissociation procedure we have to clarify what is implicit
and explicit memory. Implicit memories are those past events that influence behavior without

THEORIES BEHIND THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT

consciousness. On the other hand, explicit memory requires conscious aware of the past
experience. The difficulty is to be able to measure one without the influence of the other. Recall
and recognition are direct memory test that are usually used to test explicit memory, indirect
memory test such as completion task are used to measure implicit memory. Theprocess
dissociationprocedurewasdevelopedtoprovidebettermeasuresofconsciousandunconscious
processesbysettingthoseprocessesinoppositiontooneanother.
The test involved word stem completion, picture fragment completion, and category production
tasks, conscious and automatic memory processes were compared for studied pictures and words
with an independent retrieval model and a generate-source model. An important assumption of
the study was that the distinction between conceptual and perceptual processing matches with
that of distinction between conscious and automatic processing.
The goal of the study was to arrive at estimates of conscious and automatic memory for pictures
and words separately. Using multinomial models they inferred, indirectly, the contribution from
conceptual and perceptual processes to the picture superiority effect. The results thrown showed
better performance of pictures in conscious-conceptual memory in all the tasks, while automaticperceptual memory varied with the correlation between encoding and test formats. Results show
support for an explanation of the picture superiority effect that involves an interaction of
encoding and retrieval processes.
Development of picture superiority effect
There is an interesting study (Whitehouse, A. et al. 2006) that analyze the development of picture
superiority effect in different age groups. All the groups confirmed the picture superiority effect,
but what was interesting is that this trend increased with the age. There is a strong assumption
that the processing of pictorial information is stronger during childhood. This assumption

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contrasts the results of the study if we support the theory of the perceptual argument as the
motive of the picture superiority effect.
The different results may be related with the lack of vocabulary skills of the younger groups, and
hence generation of atypical names for the pictorial items during encoding and recall.
Nevertheless, the frequencies of recall errors were much alike so the errors in labelling pictures
may not influenced the results.
The study does not support the perceptual argument for picture superiority effect but is consistent
with Paivio's theory that states that picture superiority effect reflects the availability of inner
speech and its application to retrieval of pictorial perception that are encoded via two routes at
the same time. The study did not consider or manipulated the different strategic behavior that
emerges with age and can influence inner speech. In addition, the results obtained may be due to
the development of general semantic processing skills. Pictures elicit an image and verbal code
whereas words obtain only a verbal code. A development in semantic processing skills cna
produce a better communication of the two codes elicited by pictorial stimuli and a consequently
greater increase in the picture remembering capacity in comparison with words. "The finding is
compatible with the argument that the picture superiority effect is dependent upon dual coding
and that this in turn is dependent upon dual coding and that this in turn is dependent upon the use
of inner speech".
Education and dual code theory
According to the previous analysis the early development of non-verbal system is crucial for
later cognitive skills. This development involves sensible and motor experiences which richness
can determine future cognitive performance. Language experience in particular is important for
the development of verbal side of the dual code mind. There are several studies that suggest, for

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example, that early visual experience is essential for the development of normal perception and
promotes brain plasticity which is an important characteristic of the brain when it comes to
learning. In 1994 Campbell and Ramey made a study in early childhood educational intervention
for children from poverty families to measure gains in IQ after daily intervention involving
exercises to enhance perceptual and cognitive skills. "Results generally supported an intensity
hypothesis in that scores on cognitive and academic achievement measures increased as duration
of treatment increased." (Campbell & Ramey, 1994).
The dual code theory prediction that has countless consequences in education is the fact that
"concrete language affords an advantage over abstract language because it involves dual
encoding, that is, more access to representations in both the verbal and nonverbal codes that
provide more elaborate and more richly connected verbal and nonverbal memories on which to
draw for composing." (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) Further evidence conducted by Maes (1997)
concludes "that abstract referents are more difficult to refer to in writing and require more
anaphoric force than concrete referents because of their lower cognitive accessibility and the
greater effort required to maintain mental reference to them."
There are several skills that are fostered by pictures even when they are related to conceptual
exercises. In reading, for example, novice readers learn faster when the text is accompanied by
pictures. Regarding reading comprehension, concrete verbal material, such us short texts briefs,
improves recall. If instructors promote image formation during reading, this exercise can
enhance reading comprehension and vocabulary building. When it comes to written composition,
the use of imagery and concrete examples makes students writing more readable and memorable.
Also there are studies in the effect in remedial literacy. Dual code principles have been used with
students with learning difficulties; using nonverbal stimuli and imagery. Treating learning

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difficulties requires to work on decoding and comprehension. First the students must be able to
recognize the symbols (decode) and then connect them with their meaning (comprehend). These
skills are not necessarily correlated. Patients with Aspergers syndrome showed an incredible
capacity to read aloud without knowing the meaning of the words.
The Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes is an institution that works with learning difficulties
and teaches children and adults reading and comprehension. According to their website, "
Reading is a cognitive act, consisting of language and imagery. Instruction must align with a
theory of cognition to make a difference for students." They work associating phonemes with
motor acts and descriptive labels based on the theory that training in phonemic awareness is a
fundamental element for reading acquisition. They train reading comprehension by working with
visualization and verbalization of concepts. "Instruction entails progressive buildup of imagery
to larger and larger text segmentswords, phrases, sentences, textswith learners being
encouraged to describe their images in increasing detail. Higher order comprehension involved
in inference, prediction, and evaluation is dealt with through imagination and verbal elaboration.
This instructional technique thus teaches learners how to concretize text using imagery and dual
coding as they read."(Sadoski & Paivio, 2013). The results of Lindamod-Bell institution show a
great deal of efficacy in its approach and even students that were taught with this method excel
other schools of the same state comparable to theirs.
Going back to the different skills, there is also a significant improvemente in mathematics after
using dual coding mechanisms to develop a general theory of number processing, by
emphasizing the concrete basis of number concepts and the roles of associative mechanisms and
imagery in performing numerical operations. In arithmetichs for example children learn by
associating numbers and meanings adding little pieces or using an abacus.

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Final warnings
Even when the picture superiority effect has been verified oven a century, there are several
concerns to take into account in order to properly enhance learning and memory through
pictures. Carney and Levin (2002) have several recommendations for instructors regarding the
use of pictures in education. I will take some of them that are specially suitable for this paper:
1. The pictures must be overlapped with the content. The coherence, congruence of both is the
way the information becomes memorable. "Decorational illustrations may help to make the text
more attractive or more marketable, but they are unlikely to enhance desired outcomes related to
understanding, remembering, or applying the text content" (Carney & Levin, 2002).
2. Pictures must help with abstract concepts rather than easy concrete ones. The more concrete
the reading is the better we can recall it, so using pictures in this case will not enhance or give
additional aid for its recall and recognition (Pirozzolo & Wittrock, 1981).
3. Pictures enhancement requires reading skills to fulfill its purpose, but it can also help to those
students who lack of those reading skills to improve them (Pirozzolo & Wittrock, 1981).
4. The picture must be selected following the objective intended for it. The function can be
representational, organizational, interpretational, or transformational. The idea of the text must
match the function of the pictures. The representation makes more concrete the text, the
mnemonic pictures makes it more memorable (Levin, 1974).
5. The picture serves better when the text is more complex. When the pictures have a
interpretational function the can be useful for complex processes and for novice learners in the
field. (Levin and Mayer, 1993)
6. In order to take profit from pictures with text aside, it is important to involve the picture in a
process of appropriation. For example, labeling the illustration or give order and structure a

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process so that the students use the pictures to process the text. (Rubman and Waters, 2000).
7. The nearer the picture is to the text the better. Software with pop-up displays are more
effective than split displays in which the picture and text appear in separated locations on the
screen (Betrancourt and Bisseret, 1998)
8. Students style may also reclaim a different kind of picture. Riding and Douglas (1993) conduct
a study in which students classified according to the their cognitive styles where tested in
learning performance with text-plus-text and text-plus-picture computer presentation. It was
found that the Verbal-Imagery cognitive style and presentation condition interacted in their effect
on overall learning performance. In the text-plus-picture condition Imagers were superior to
Verbalisers, while the text-plus-text condition Verbalisers did better than Imagers.
Personal conclusion
Pictures play an important role in memory, and therefore in learning. The sole adoption of the
picture superiority effect may lead us to undesired results. The use of pictures must take into
consideration the purpose, the input, the retrieval, among other things, if the intention is to
multiply the learning effect. Regarding the theories that were considered to explain the PSE there
is an important role of neuroscience that can give new and further answers to the issue. The
results showed some inclination to the common code theory based in scientific evidence. The
interaction of both fields may be still in its infancy but it have important contributions to each
other.

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