Remembering Art Through the Art of Memory

ABSTRACT

An experiment was conducted in which the face-name mnemonic was applied to the task of associating 14 artists' names with two styles of their artwork, portraits and thematic paintings. Following study of the 28 items, mnemonic students outperformed “own best method” control students on both immediate and delayed matching tests. Further, mnemonic students maintained that advantage on a two-day delayed “transfer” test that required the identification of “new” paintings by the same artists. In addition to replicating prior positive mnemonic artwork-learning findings, we found that thematic paintings are generally easier to associate with names than are portraits — likely because they are more distinctive, and because they provide a more “target-rich environment” for making mnemonic associations. Implications of our findings for remembering artwork and other picture-word content mnemonically in educational and real-world contexts are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Artwork learning
• face-name mnemonic
• mnemonic strategy
• memory

Notes

1. In numerous mnemonic studies with college-age participants over the years, short time intervals for keyword learning have proven to be appropriate (e.g., Carney & Levin, 2014; Carney et al., 1997). Only a short time interval is needed because, as Atkinson (1975) observed, “The acoustic link [between word and word clue] is formed easily” (p. 822). As one illustration, Carney and Levin (Experiment 1, 2001) found that mnemonic-condition students who had studied name clues at 10-sec intervals earlier in their procedure recalled 90% of the provided name clues correctly. Associating name clues with names tends to be fairly easy when the name clue closely resembles part or all of the associated name, even for elementary school-aged and special-needs children (e.g., Levin, 1996). In addition, in studies going back nearly three decades (e.g., Carney & Levin, 1991; Carney et al., 1988; Carney et al., 1997), researchers have found 20-sec intervals to be adequate for learning researcher-provided mnemonic materials that prompt interactive images.

2. A reviewer raised the question as to whether “transfer of students’ ability to recognize artists or styles” was specifically a goal of art educators? To investigate, we conducted a brief Google search related to learning objectives in art appreciation classes. Some relevant objectives we found included (1) “to be able to recognize certain styles in art as well a mediums and discuss their characteristics (retrieved from www.bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/materials/art/Casprowiak/…/105_syll_fall_2012.pdf); (2) “students will: identify a work of art” and “justify attribution of an unknown work of art” (retrieved from https://my.vhslearning.org/PublicCourseDescription.aspx?c=34); and (3) “identify and describe a body of art works (individually and collectively) in the creative arts” (retrieved from http://www.tamuc.edu/academics/cvSyllabi/syllabi/201680/80583.pdf). Although we did not come across any objectives stating specifically that students would be “able to recognize new paintings by studied artists” we nonetheless believe that such transfer is a valuable outcome, one worthy of empirical investigation.

3. Apart from McCabe et al.'s (2013) survey omission, we note that the face-name mnemonic is not mentioned in the subject index of Worthen and Hunt's (2011) excellent compendium, Mnemonology: Mnemonics for the 21st Century.

4. The Venus de Milo's distinctive missing arms are a notable exception to this statement.