Thirty college undergraduates participated in a study of the effects of acoustic and visual interference on the recall of word and picture triads in both short-term and long-term memory. The subjects were presented 24 triads of monosyllabic nouns representing all of the possible combinations of presentation types: pictures, printed words, and spoken words. Each triad presentation was followed by a visual, acoustic, simultaneous, or no interference task. After each triad and after the complete presentation, the subjects free-recalled as many nouns as possible, indicated presentation type, and rated their confidence in the presentation type. The results showed that in short-term memory, picture recall was superior to that of both printed and spoken words under conditions of acoustic and simultaneous--but not visual--interference. The lowest recall in both long-term and short-term memory was found for spoken words under the acoustic interference condition. (FL)