Conquering Mnemonophobia, With Help From Three Practical Measures of Memory and Application

Abstract

Recent articles in Teaching of Psychology have endorsed the classroom use of various mnemonic techniques. Yet a degree of mnemonophobia (i.e., fear of using mnemonics) may persist in the minds of some ToP readers due to various lingering misconceptions. In this regard, we conducted 3 practical experiments with college students using the mnemonic keyword method to learn a set of psychological terms (namely, phobias, for which we provide a sample set, along with their mnemonic representations). We examined students' immediate and delayed recall, inference-demanding matching and categorization tests, and backward recall (recall of terms from definitions). On all measures, mnemonic students statistically outperformed control students. These findings provide further support for the use of classroom-based mnemonic techniques.

Notes

An anonymous reviewer suggested that another limitation of these studies, as well as the one reported here, is that students in the control condition were instructed to use a repetition strategy rather than their own preferred method of study. The reviewer argued that in the absence of instruction, adults (particularly college students) are likely to employ strategies in associative-learning tasks that are more effective than simply repeating the to-be-associated items (here, an unfamiliar term and its meaning). Indeed, there is some research evidence to support that argument (see Carney & Levin, 1998c; Levin, 2008) and, as a consequence, we have included “own method” control strategies in much of our own previous research (e.g., Carney & Levin, 2001, 2003, 2007). For this study, however, we opted for a repetition control strategy for two principal reasons. First, the study represented an attempted replication of our earlier study (Carney & Levin, 1998a), which incorporated a repetition control strategy. Second, a repetition strategy more likely assures that all participants will be engaged in some form of structured study activity, rather than passively staring at the items and wondering how to process each one.

^an = 21.

^bn = 22.

^c MSE = 396.11.

^d MSE = 464.72.

^e MSE = 354.72$.

^an = 27.

^b n = 26.

^c MSE = 448.19.

^d MSE = 837.22.

^e MSE = 749.79.

^f MSE = 687.57.

^g MSE = 625.51.

^a n = 29.

^b MSE = 437.80.

^c MSE = 633.88.

^d MSE = 611.22.

^e MSE = 104.24.

^f MSE = 187.22.

^g MSE = 536.94.

∗Not statistically significant.