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How does volitional photo taking affect unaided memory for visual and auditory aspects of experiences? Across one field and three lab studies, we found that, even without revisiting any photos, participants who could freely take photographs during an experience recognized more of what they saw and less of what they heard, compared with those who could not take any photographs. Further, merely taking mental photos had similar effects on memory. These results provide support for the idea that photo taking induces a shift in attention toward visual aspects and away from auditory aspects of an experience. Additional findings were in line with this mechanism: Participants with a camera had better recognition of aspects of the scene that they photographed than of aspects they did not photograph. Furthermore, participants who used a camera during their experience recognized even nonphotographed aspects better than participants without a camera did. Meta-analyses including all reported studies support these findings.

Recent studies show that recognition memory for pictures is consistently better than recognition memory for sounds. The purpose of this experiment was to compare the fidelity of auditory and visual memory to better understand the reported differences in the two memory systems. Participants received a study phase with pictures/sounds, followed by a same-day memory test or a delayed recognition memory test. During the memory test, participants were presented with pictures/sounds that were old (presented during study), novel foils not presented during study, or exemplar foils that were variants of objects presented during study. Participants were instructed to classify each picture/sound as “old” or “new” by pressing a corresponding key. The same-day memory task revealed fundamental differences in visual and auditory memory: auditory representations are coarse and gist-based, while visual representations are highly detailed. However, auditory and visual memory performance was similar after a delay of 2 and 7 days and both types of memory representations were more coarse and gist-based. The results make an important contribution to our understanding of how the world is represented in auditory and visual memory.

Web-based experimentation, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has enabled large-scale participant recruitment and data collection. Auditory testing on the web has shown promise but faces challenges such as uncontrolled environments and verifying headphone use. Prior studies have successfully replicated auditory experiments but often involved younger participants, limiting the generalizability to older adults with varying hearing abilities. This study explores the feasibility of conducting reliable auditory cognitive testing using a web-based platform, especially among older adults. This study aims to determine whether demographic factors such as age and hearing status influence participation in web-based auditory cognitive experiments and to assess the reproducibility of auditory cognitive measures-specifically speech-in-noise perception and auditory memory (AuM)-between in-person and web-based settings. Additionally, this study aims to examine the relationship between musical sophistication, measured by the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (GMSI), and auditory cognitive measures across different testing environments. A total of 153 participants aged 50 to 86 years were recruited from local registries and memory clinics; 58 of these returned for web-based, follow-up assessments. An additional 89 participants from the PREVENT cohort were included in the web-based study, forming a combined sample. Participants completed speech-in-noise perception tasks (Digits-in-Noise and Speech-in-Babble), AuM tests for frequency and amplitude modulation rate, and the GMSI questionnaire. In-person testing was conducted in a soundproof room with standardized equipment, while web-based tests required participants to use headphones in a quiet room via a web-based app. The reproducibility of auditory measures was evaluated using Pearson and intraclass correlation coefficients, and statistical analyses assessed relationships between variables across settings. Older participants and those with severe hearing loss were underrepresented in the web-based follow-up. The GMSI questionnaire demonstrated the highest reproducibility (r=0.82), while auditory cognitive tasks showed moderate reproducibility (Digits-in-Noise and Speech-in-Babble r=0.55 AuM tests for frequency r=0.75 and amplitude modulation rate r=0.44). There were no significant differences in the correlation between age and auditory measures across in-person and web-based settings (all P>.05). The study replicated previously reported associations between AuM and GMSI scores, as well as sentence-in-noise perception, indicating consistency across testing environments. Web-based auditory cognitive testing is feasible and yields results comparable to in-person testing, especially for questionnaire-based measures like the GMSI. While auditory tasks demonstrated moderate reproducibility, the consistent replication of key associations suggests that web-based testing is a viable alternative for auditory cognition research. However, the underrepresentation of older adults and those with severe hearing loss highlights a need to address barriers to web-based participation. Future work should explore methods to enhance inclusivity, such as remote guided testing, and address factors like digital literacy and equipment standards to improve the representativeness and quality of web-based auditory research.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of five-minutes of music on types of memory in college students. Sixty-nine students successfully completed the study, they were randomly assigned to either a control group or an intervention group. This study was two days long, and the intervention (listening to five minutes of Oriental Jazz music) was applied in the second day. We assessed short-term visual memory (immediate recall and five-minute delayed recall) with Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test, short-term verbal-auditory memory (immediate recall and ten-minute delayed recall) with Rey Audio–Verbal Learning test, Working memory with forward and backward Digit Span test, and false memory with Deese–Roediger–McDermott test. Results showed that the intervention did not cause any significant effect on the recall of verbal information, on working memory performance, or on the incidence of false memories. However, music had a positive impact on visual memory. This study suggests the possible positive impact of music if used in educational settings aligned with visual teaching methods.

The tritone paradox is a bistable auditory phenomenon where two Shepard tones can be interpreted as either ascending or descending. Previous studies have demonstrated that preceding auditory context can bias the direction of tritone perception. Here, we systematically manipulated both the quantity (anywhere between 1 and 10) and types (higher, lower, same as first target tone, or silent) of context tones before presenting a target tritone pair. We found that the contextual biasing effect can emerge with as few as 1–2 context tones, and plateaus quickly within this small window. Notably, low-frequency context tones produced a more pronounced and immediate bias than high-frequency tones. Together, this study demonstrates a narrow window of the auditory context effect, where minimal contextual cues are sufficient to guide perceptual interpretation of ambiguous auditory stimuli. The findings pave the way for more detailed investigations into the cognitive mechanisms of auditory perception, emphasizing the swift influence of immediate auditory contexts on perceptual outcomes.

Background: Working memory (WM) is essential for reasoning, learning, and everyday cognitive tasks and can be influenced by stress. This study investigated the relationship between perceived stress and auditory working memory in 24 adults (16 women, 8 men; median age = 22). Methods: Participants completed the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) and a pseudoword span task assessing auditory memory under phonologically demanding conditions. Results: Participants with higher stress levels exhibited greater variability and a decline in performance across pseudowords sets, particularly in the final set. Correlational analyses revealed that higher PSS-10 scores were significantly associated with lower accuracy on the most demanding memory set (r = −0.467, p = 0.021) and with younger age (r = −0.489, p = 0.015). These findings suggest that elevated stress may impair auditory working memory, with younger adults reporting higher perceived stress. Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of considering stress levels in cognitive assessments and supports the hypothesis that stress negatively affects working memory efficiency, particularly in tasks requiring phonological processing.

Immature auditory perception in children has generally been ascribed to deficiencies in cognitive factors, such as working memory and inattention. This notion appears to be commonly accepted for all children despite limited empirical evidence. In the present work, we examined whether working memory capacity would predict basic aspects of hearing, pure-tone frequency discrimination and temporal gap detection, in typically-developing, normal-hearing children (7-12 years). Contrary to our expectation, working memory capacity, as measured by digit spans, or intrinsic auditory attention (on- and off-task response variability) did not consistently predict the individual variability in auditory perception. Present results provide no evidence for a role of working memory capacity in basic measures of auditory perception in children. This lack of a relationship may partly explain why some children with perceptual deficits despite normal audiograms (commonly referred to as auditory processing disorders) may have typical cognitive abilities.

Numerous studies have shown that musicians outperform nonmusicians on a variety of tasks. Here we provide the first evidence that musicians have superior auditory recognition memory for both musical and nonmusical stimuli, compared to nonmusicians. However, this advantage did not generalize to the visual domain. Previously, we showed that auditory recognition memory is inferior to visual recognition memory. Would this be true even for trained musicians? We compared auditory and visual memory in musicians and nonmusicians using familiar music, spoken English, and visual objects. For both groups, memory for the auditory stimuli was inferior to memory for the visual objects. Thus, although considerable musical training is associated with better musical and nonmusical auditory memory, it does not increase the ability to remember sounds to the levels found with visual stimuli. This suggests a fundamental capacity difference between auditory and visual recognition memory, with a persistent advantage for the visual domain.

Background Aging population has led to an increased proportion of older adults and cognitively impaired. We designed a brief and flexible two-stage cognitive screening scale, the Dual-Stage Cognitive Assessment (DuCA), for cognitive screening in primary care settings. Method In total, 1,772 community-dwelling participants were recruited, including those with normal cognition (NC, n = 1,008), mild cognitive impairment (MCI, n = 633), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD, n = 131), and administered a neuropsychological test battery and the DuCA. To improve performance, the DuCA combines visual and auditory memory tests for an enhanced memory function test. Results The correlation coefficient between DuCA-part 1 and DuCA-total was 0.84 (P < 0.001). The correlation coefficients of DuCA-part 1 with Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) and Montreal Cognitive Assessment Basic (MoCA-B) were 0.66 (P < 0.001) and 0.85 (P < 0.001), respectively. The correlation coefficients of DuCA-total with ACE-III and MoCA-B were 0.78 (P < 0.001) and 0.83 (P < 0.001), respectively. DuCA-Part 1 showed a similar discrimination ability for MCI from NC (area under curve [AUC] = 0.87, 95%CI 0.848–0.883) as ACE III (AUC = 0.86, 95%CI 0.838–0.874) and MoCA-B (AUC = 0.85, 95%CI 0.830–0.868). DuCA-total had a higher AUC (0.93, 95%CI: 0.917–0.942). At different education levels, the AUC was 0.83–0.84 for DuCA-part 1, and 0.89–0.94 for DuCA-total. DuCA-part 1 and DuCA-total’s ability to discriminate AD from MCI was 0.84 and 0.93, respectively. Conclusion DuCA-Part 1 would aid rapid screening and supplemented with the second part for a complete assessment. DuCA is suited for large-scale cognitive screening in primary care, saving time and eliminating the need for extensively training assessors.