Why are pictures remembered better than sounds? The roles of subjective vividness of mental imagery and semantic labels.

Pictures are recognized more accurately than environmental sounds, possibly because pictures provide enhanced conceptual and perceptual representations than sounds. Conceptual-perceptual distinctiveness (CPD) theory proposes that pictures benefit from stronger semantic organization and more diagnostic perceptual detail. It remains unclear whether the picture superiority effect reflects differences in the subjective vividness of retrieved memories and whether increasing category-level semantic support can enhance vividness for environmental sounds, thereby reducing picture superiority in recognition memory. Vividness was assessed independently of recognition by having participants generate a mental image from a written label and rate its vividness before old/new judgment of the recognition probe. Experiment 1 replicated the picture superiority effect, with pictures producing higher vividness and recognition accuracy than sounds. In Experiments 2A and 2B, written labels strengthened category-level semantic support for sounds, increasing vividness and target recognition and eliminating modality differences for targets. However, pictures continued to show superior lure (i.e., exemplar foil) discrimination and higher vividness preceding accurate lure rejection. Generalized linear mixed-effects (GLMM) analyses showed that vividness selectively predicted correct target recognition for pictures, whereas for sounds, greater vividness also increased false recognition of lures. Together, these findings suggest that semantic support enhances vividness of mental imagery and target recognition for sounds, whereas the picture superiority effect for lure recognition reflects stronger item-specific retrieval information.