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. 2025 Oct;32(5):2322-2330.
doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02708-3. Epub 2025 May 8.

The superiority of graphics over text in long-term memory retention

Lorenzo Ciccione  1   2 , Denis Caroti  3 , Syalie Liu  4   5 , Valeria Giardino  6 , Elena Pasquinelli  7 , Stanislas Dehaene  8   5
Affiliations

The superiority of graphics over text in long-term memory retention

Lorenzo Ciccione et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Oct.

Abstract

Graphical representations of data are pervasive in modern communication and are often used to convey socio-economic, scientific, and medical information. Despite their popularity, it is still unknown whether they can enhance the long-term retention of their content. We conducted a delayed-recall task with psychology undergraduates (N = 92), in which participants read about the evolution of a socio-economic phenomenon, with five to six datapoints presented as graphics, text, or table; recall was operationalized as correct reporting of the trend in the data, 2 h after the information was presented. We found that graphics facilitated the delayed recall of such trends. No advantage was found on immediate recall of trends or specific datapoints in another sample of participants (N = 80). Thus, even for equal initial encoding of data, and even for very concise materials, graphics facilitate long-term retention. Overall, the study reveals the potential of graphics as effective tools for enhancing memory retention and therefore highlights their valuable role in educational settings.

Keywords: Data visualization; Educational tools; Graphical representations; Learning; Memory.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: The study has been approved by the ethical committee of Paris Saclay University (under the code: CER-Paris-Saclay-2019-061) and was conducted in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki. Consent to participate: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Consent to publication: All participants signed a written form in which they declared their consent to publish the data derived from the study. Open practices statement: None of the experiments were pre-registered. All data and materials are available via the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/5w2vm/?view_only=832552e639a142fdb9531acef4818525 ). Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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