Facing Facts: Can the Face-Name Mnemonic Strategy Accommodate Additional Factual Information?

Abstract

In 3 experiments, undergraduates used their own best method (control) or an “imposed” face-name mnemonic strategy to associate 18 caricatured faces, names, and additional facts. On all immediate tests (prompted by the faces), and on the delayed tests of Experiments 2a and 2b combined, mnemonic students statistically outperformed control students on name and political affiliation identification measures as well as on name-affiliation pairs. Interference issues were examined in the latter 2 experiments. The study findings replicate prior positive findings with the face-name mnemonic and demonstrate that additional factual information can be successfully added to the face-name mnemonic strategy through implementation of the present mnemonic format.

Keywords:

• college students
• face-name mnemonic strategy
• interference
• learning processes/strategies
• memory

Notes

1. As was just mentioned, caricatures used were of historical figures that we judged to be unfamiliar. Some examples include John Tyndall, August Belmont, Thomas Brackett Reed, Fernando Wood, Henry George, William Lloyd Garrison, and Horatio Seymour. It may be noted that even if any of these individuals had been somewhat familiar to participants, students would be less likely to recognize them in caricature format than if we had used actual photographs (see, for example, Tversky & Baratz, 1985). Also, to add to the task's difficulty, we selected only male caricatures. Mixing men and women would have provided additional differentiating information that would likely have made the memory task easier.

2. In this section, for added clarity, small pen-and-ink drawings of an elephant, a donkey, and a chicken were positioned adjacent to the wording that associated each animal with a political affiliation. Although the use of a chicken as the symbol for “undecided” was potentially humorous, students were informed that it was not meant to be pejorative. Rather, the chicken simply represented a distinct and familiar animal to be used as a symbol.

3. Students had previously been randomly assigned to repetition and keyword study conditions in an experiment that took place two days earlier. The prior experiment dealt with learning new technical terminology. We maintained comparable randomly based condition assignments for the current experiment. In particular, students who had previously been asked to use repetition were now asked to use their own best method (control). Students who formerly used the keyword method were directed to use the face-name mnemonic strategy. One additional student who did not participate in the initial experiment also participated.

4. We conducted two experiments during subsequent semesters following Experiment 1. Given the parallel nature of these two experiments, we labeled them “2a” and “2b.” As is noted in Footnote 5, a labeling error in the first of these (2a) resulted in one of the to-be-learned items being eliminated. That error was corrected and the experiment was conducted again (2b). Because these two experiments were identical except for that correction, the across-experiment data were combined for a single analysis.

5. Following the experiment (Experiment 2a), we noticed an error in one caricature's mnemonic elaboration: The individual was labeled Republican, but the described image involved a desert (Democrat) scene. Hence, we decided to eliminate that item, along with the corresponding surnamed item, from Sets A and B. Thus, the number possible correct was reduced by one in all totals related to Sets A and B (i.e., where relevant, 18 became 17, 9 became 8, and 3 became 2).

6. In their research with artwork learning, Carney and Levin (1994) successfully added the date in which a picture was painted to the face-name mnemonic's interactive image. The date was recoded using the phonetic or digit-consonant mnemonic strategy (e.g., Higbee, 1996) and added to the interactive image.

7. Even if a prominent feature were identified, there is the strong likelihood that it would not be unique within the members of the class, which means that the particular feature would be relied upon to cue several different images based on different name clues and names.

8. Tests prompted students in the mnemonic condition to write down animals (Experiment 1) or locations (Experiments 2a and 2b). A review of these data confirmed our impression that students in that condition were highly successful in associating symbols with their corresponding political affiliations. Also, a topical note is that the current Tea Party political movement would easily lend itself to a related icon that could be made to interact in a face-name mnemonic image, whether as an actual tea bag or tea pot, or as a ship or dock location to represent the Boston Tea Party.