Prychologia, 2002, 45, 69-79 Invited Lecture USES OF MNEMONICS IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS: A BRIEF REVIEW OF SELECTED RESEARCH Emmanuel MANALO ‘The University of Auckland, New Zealand ‘The wide-ranging applications of mnemonic strategies in educational settings are reviewed through selected examples of research studies that have been undertaken during the past couple of decades. These studies point out the effectiveness ofthese strategies not just in teaching many kinds of information that students often find teaching those with special Iearning needs. The varieties of mnemonic strategies that exist are highlighted — from simple keywords for remembering new vocabulary words toa sophisticated method for remembering ‘procedures that was developed in Japan. Common misconceptions about the use fof mnemonic techniques are noted, followed by some of the more recent research findings on people's use of these techniques that ought 10 dispel many of the ‘misgivings associated with their use. Finally, possible future research directions on difficult to remember, but als mnemonics and their uses are discussed. Key words: memory, mnemonics, school learning, teaching strategies ‘A simple and broad definition of the word mnemonics is that they are methods for assisting memory. There are two basic types: those that are used for remembering facts — known as fact mnemonics, and those that used for remembering rules and procedures — known as process mnemonics. An example of a fact mnemonic is “Richard of York gave battle in vain,” a phrase in which the first letter of each word serves as a reminder of the colours of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. An example of a process mnemonic is “An i before an e, except after ¢ or when sounded like an a as in neighbor and weigh,” which can be used to work out the correct order of i's and e's when they occur together in words: Although some authors have described mnemonics as being artificial and not facilitative of comprehension (sce for example, Kilpatrick, 1985; Neisser, 1976), there is considerable evidence in the published research literature suggesting that mnemonics have effective, practical applications in educational settings. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to some of those applications and the research that supports them, both for the benefit of teachers who may be keen to try out (and even develop) alternative strategies where other methods have failed, as well Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Emmanuel Manalo, The Student Learning Centre, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand (E-mail: ¢.manalo@ auckland, ae.n2) The author would like ca thank Kenneth L, Higbee and Julie Trafford for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this paper. This paper is based on an invited lecture given at Kyoto University on 29 ‘October 2001 6910 MANALO as researchers who may have an interest in strategies that people can use to successfully remember information. It is by no means the author's intention to portray mnemonics as the answer to all memory and learning requirements that people may have, but as worthwhile methods to consider when there are demanding challenges to memory, and as methods that have many facets worthy of further investigation, Myemonic Uses 1 Scuoo Learninc Most of the research studies that have looked at the uses of mnemonic strategies in school learning were carried out in the 1980s. ‘The findings of these largely indicate better learning performance with mnemonic use. The majority of studies have focused on the use of pictorial fact mnemonics, and many have looked at the difference between memory-facilitative and non-facilitative pictures (¢.g., a picture of a snake that forms part of the letter $ would be considered memory-facilitative in that the appearance of the letter § itself is likely to trigger recollection of the snake picture which in turn would act as a reminder of the sound that the letter makes; the same would not apply with the common kindergarten depiction of the letter A and a separate picture of an apple — which does not look anything like the letter A — beside it). Pictorial mnemonics have been used effectively in vocabulary learning. A paper by Levin, McCormick, Miller, Berry, and Pressley (1982) is a good example. In the study they reported, children were taught new vocabulary words, such as that the word surplus means “having some left over, having more than was needed.” Children in the pictorial mnemonic group were given pictures that involved stimulus recoding,USES OF MNEMONICS IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS, 1 so that for example they were shown a picture of someone pouring lots of syrup over pancakes and saying that there was a surplus of syrup in the cupboard. ‘Thus, apart from illustrating a situation where surplus was involved, the word syrup was also used as a keyword mnemonic to help remember the meaning of the word surplus. (A keyword mnemonic is a similar sounding word that, when associated with the target word, serves as a reminder of what that target word is.) In contrast, children in the control group were given only pictures illustrating the meaning of target words without the keyword mnemonics (e.g., someone using lots of ketchup and saying there is a surplus of it in the cupboard). Needless to say, children in the mnemonic group remembered more of the new vocabulary words. Other studies that have investigated the use of mnemonics in school learning include Shriberg, Levin, McCormick, and Presley's (1982) on using pictorial mnemonics to assist in learning detail presented in prose, and Ehri, Deffner, and Wilce’s (1984) which concerned the use of mnemonics in teaching letter-sound associations to pre-readers. In the Shriberg et al. study, children in the mnei condition were taught the accomplishments of various fictitious individuals using keywords to recode the names of the individuals and pictures linking the keywords to their accomplishments. Hence, for example, a Charles McKune who was supposed to be famous for having a cat that could count was recoded as racoon, and the children were shown a drawing of a cat counting racoons as they jumped over a fence, In the Ehri et al. study, pre-readers in the mnemonic condition were given ‘integrated” pictures linking consonants of the alphabet with objects starting with that letter (c.g., house for h), while those in the control condition were given ‘disassociated’ pictures. In the integrated pictures, the shape of the letter forms part of the object (e.g., the vertical stem on the left side of the letter h constitutes the chimney of the house, and the remainder of the letter constitutes the house itself), while in the disassociated pictures the letter and the object are simply next to each other (¢.g., the letter h beside a drawing of a house that does not resemble the letter h). In both the Shriberg et al. and the Ehri et al. studies, children in the mnemonic conditions significantly outperformed those in the control conditions. Other studies have shown that mnemonic techniques can facilitate learning of obscure English words (McDaniel, Pressley, & Dunay, 1987), recall and comprehension of unfamiliar Old English words (McDaniel & Pressley, 1989), learning of German nouns and their grammatical gender (Desrochers, Gelinas, & Wicland, 1989), and recall and use of botany concepts (Rosenheck, Levin, & Levin, 1989). The results of these studies suggest that the use of mnemonic strategies can result in faster learning and better recall of target information, more information being learned, better comprehension, and longer term maintenance of information learned. Myemonic Instruction oF SrupeNts Wirt LEARNING DISABILITIES In the 1980s, there were also numerous studies that looked specifically at the use