Mnemonic Imagery Presentation by: Alyson O’Neill

Bibliographic Information

• Peters, E.E., & Levin, J.R. (1986). Effects of a mnemonic imagery strategy on good and poor readers' prose recall. Reading Research Quarterly, 21(2), Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/747844.

Purpose of Research

• “To determine whether children of different reading abilities would benefit from a mnemonic (memory-enhancing) imagery strategy in a prose-learning situation”(p. 180).

Rational • Experimenters were interested in

understanding how the mnemonic imagery strategy affects reading levels both positively and negatively.

• Students were asked to apply the “keyword” method to a prose-learning task, using Levin’s (1983) “Three R’s”

• Recode, Relate, Retrieve

• Example: Charlene McKune

Experiment #1

• Larry Taylor has invented a house-on-a-turntable. The house-on-a-turntable rotates in a clockwise direction, but can be brought to a stop at any time. The house-on-a-turn-table is ideal for growing house plants which may require different exposures to the sun.

Experiment #1: Methods

• 38 eighth-grade students (broken into two groups of 19) from 3 middle schools in a Midwestern university community. All subjects received a score at or above the 50th percentile nationally in either vocabulary or comprehension on the Nelson Reading Test, Form B (1962).

• Group 1 = mnemonic imagery condition

• Group 2 = no-strategy control condition

Experiment #1: Methods

• Time Frame:

• Each student was tested individually for about 35 minutes.

• Students were tested a week after their first testing using the same procedures.

Experiment #1: Methods

• 14 passages were used within the experiment.

• Group 1 (imagery): instructed on the “Three R’s” (sample cards contained relational illustrations)

• Group 2 (no-strategy): instructed to use their “own best method.”

• Students were asked to read and respond to 12 short passages.

Experiment #1: Data

Good Comprehende

rs

Good Comprehende

rs

Poor Comprehender

s

Poor Comprehende

rs

MeasureMnemonic Strategy

No-strategy Control

Mnemonic Strategy

No-Strategy Control

Central Recall:

Immediate Test

73.7 46.2 63.4 20.8

Central Recall: Delayed

Test

50.2 28.2 33.3 13.3

Experiment #1: Data

Good Comprehend

ers

Good Comprehend

ers

Poor Comprehend

ers

Poor Comprehend

ers

MeasureMnemonic Strategy

No-Strategy Control

Mnemonic Strategy

No-Strategy Control

Incidental Recall:

Immediate Test

82.2 81.3 73.4 72.2

Incidental Recall:

Delayed Test81.6 75.5 68.4 67.0

Experiment #1: Findings• 89% of good comprehenders and 79% of

poor comprehenders from the mnemonic imagery group reported adopting their instructional strategy to study by.

• No-strategy control subjects reported using semantic association or rote rehearsal.

• A mnemonic imagery strategy can be applied effectively by eighth-grade students to pure reading assignments.

Implications for Teaching

• This research suggests that explicitly teaching students how to use the mnemonic imagery strategy is effective with upper elementary students who are given “pure reading” assignments. When students are given research-based tools to recall information (central or incidental) they will likely find more success than using their “own best method.”