Effect of Mnemonic Encoding Techniques on Immediate and Delayed Serial Learning

Abstract

60 undergraduates participated in a serial learning task comparing three instructional strategies: the story and pegword mnemonic techniques (which both stress order relationships between test items) and an uninstructed control group using subject-determined, idiosyncratic study and rehearsal methods. All subjects learned four 10-item lists followed by an immediate recall after each list presentation and a delayed recall after completion of all four lists. Results showed no significant differences between the three strategies on immediate recall. However, by the delayed retention test, recall by the story-technique group had decreased 12%, recall by the control group had decreased 28%, but recall by the pegword group had decreased 52%. Differences in retention were related to the underlying organizational structures of the mnemonic techniques. Thus, this study showed the story technique to be the most effective mnemonic strategy when retention of ordered items is desired.

The applicability of verbal mnemonics for different populations: A review

“…Also, Bower and Winzenz (1970), using concrete word pairs, found that imagery led to better recall performance than ready-made or self-produced sentences, and better recognition performance than ready-made sentences. The only inconsistent finding is by Borges, Arnold and McClure (1976), who used concrete materials, and found the sentence mnemonic led to better performance than imagery. However, unlike the other studies, Borges et al compared the sentence mnemonic to the imagery peg-word system, and so the results may not reflect the comparative value of imagery and sentence mnemonics per se.…”

Forgetting Numbers in Old Age: Strategy and Learning Speed Matter

“…Some studies report no differences in retention comparing a mnemonic condition with a rote-rehearsal condition using retention intervals up to 8 weeks [15,16] . By contrast, other studies document forgetting fi ndings in favor of tutor-provided mnemonic strategies compared to control conditions [17][18][19][20] , although the bulk of research suggests that non-mnemonic self-initiated strategies might be more effective than tutor-provided instructions for long-term retention [21][22][23][24][25] . However, in these studies the different mnemonics or strategies were provided to the subjects during the encoding phase of the testing situation and were thus used with little or no practice.…”

A Review of the Literature on Memory Enhancement: The Potential and Relevance of Mnemotechnics for Military Training

“…Similarly, Santa, Fuskin, and Yio (1973) found a story technique (linking) to be superior to a pegword technique with respect to the final recall of six lists of ten words each. With respect to serial learning, Borges, Arnold, and McClure (1976) found a story mnemotechnic superior to a pegword mnemotechnic for the delayed recall of four lists of ten items each. It would appear, then, that unless it is desirable to recall rapidly by list position, that a linking story mnemotechnic should be preferred for list learning.…”