Does a picture worth 1,000 words ?

People remember pictures more readily than remember words. This is because our brains short-term memory for line drawings was superior to memory for printed words. Who doesn't know the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" ?

In an recent experiment, volunteer participants were asked to recall as many of the words as possible on some pictures or printed words they just saw. The experiment was repeated until the list of 54 words (simple nouns like "baby," "whale," and "handcuffs") had each been used (embedded) in picture and print form. As expected, pictures were correctly recalled more often than printed words, but only by 1.5 times more. Thus, technically, a picture may in fact only be worth about 1.5 words, not 1,000.

Source: Memory & Cognition, 33(3), 499-513, 2005.