An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of presentation mode, picture content and serial position upon the recall of brief television news items. Fifteen items were presented in either video or audio-only mode to 40 subjects. Within the video mode, five items contained film footage, five contained still pictures and five consisted of the newscaster only.

Recall of the items was significantly better following video presentation than after audio-only presentation; and in the video mode, film items were recalled significantly more often than still picture items, which were in turn recalled significantly more often than no-picture items. Significant serial position effects occurred across all items in the audio mode, and over still picture and no-picture items, but not film items in the video mode.

The results are discussed in terms of various imagery hypotheses.