Medieval and Renaissance teaching techniques used linkage between course content and tangentially related visual symbols to reinforce lectures. This technique was adopted in teaching pharmacologic principles of addiction to international audiences. It produced significant results with non-English-speaking audiences using concurrent or consecutive translation. This technique may be useful for non-English-speaking audiences because of enhancement of all three areas of memory: attention, storage, and retrieval.

Medieval and Renaissance teaching techniques using linkage between course content and tangentially related visual symbols were applied to the teaching of the pharmacological principles of addiction. Forty medical students randomly divided into two blinded groups viewed a lecture. One lecture was supplemented by symbolic slides, and the second was not. Students who viewed symbolic slides had significantly higher scores in a written 15-question multiple-choice test 30 days after the lecture. These results were consistent with learning and semiotic models. These models hypothesize a linkage between conceptual content and perception of visual symbols that thereby increases conceptual retention. Recent neurochemical research supports the existence of a linkage between two chemically distinct memory systems. Simultaneous stimulation of both chemical systems by teaching formats similar to those employed in the study can augment neurochemical signaling in the neocortex.

40 undergraduate students, none of whom were history or literature majors, attended a lecture on Medieval literature. For half the students the lecture was supplemented by two sets of slides. One set summarized course content while the second set contained slides of paintings or other forms of visual art which were only tangentially related to the topic. For the other half of the student-group, the lecture was supplemented by course content slides only. Students viewing symbolic slides had significantly higher test scores on a written 20-question multiple-choice test given immediately after the lecture.