Concept · Cognitive Bias: Memory biases and distortions

Picture superiority effect

Origin: Paivio, 1971

Biological Parallel

Visual cortex comprises 30% of human brain mass versus 3% for auditory—evolution built 10x more neural infrastructure for images because 'where is the food/threat?' outpredicted abstract verbal concepts. Pictures activate spatial, emotional, and semantic networks simultaneously, creating redundant retrieval pathways. This is infrastructure determining capability: you remember images better because your brain invested more computational power in visual prediction.