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The ability to recognize and name the sounds of alphabet letters is a crucial prerequisite for students as they embark on their journey to learn how to read. Regrettably, some children face significant challenges in this area. In this single-case multiple baseline study, we utilized mnemonic pictures to facilitate the memorization of the grapheme-phoneme correspondence of ten target letters. Our aim was to empower four struggling first-grade students to quickly and confidently retrieve this information. The results reveal that the students significantly benefited from the intervention. Furthermore, the approach was perceived as attractive and helpful by both the four children and their teacher. The study concludes by reflecting on its limitations and discussing potential implications and future avenues of research.

Mnemonic devices are memory aids that make it easier to recall information and are widely used by students studying anatomy and physiology. Simple musical instruments and toys can serve as mnemonic devices for students learning the functional anatomy of the larynx: balloons can help learners understand and recall how sound is produced; tuning pegs can help learners understand how tension affects vocal pitch; fingers on a fretboard can help learners understand how pitch is further modulated; and a common coach's whistle can demonstrate how vocal volume is controlled. Using instruments and toys engages adult learners and helps them connect complex laryngeal anatomy with previous experiences.

Childhood is a period when memory consolidation and knowledge base undergo rapid changes. The present study examined short-delay (overnight) and long-delay (after a 2-week period) consolidation of new information either congruent or incongruent with prior knowledge in typically developing 6- to 8-year-old children (n = 32), 9- to 11-year-old children (n = 33), and 18- to 30-year-old young adults (YA; n = 39). Both memory accessibility (cued recall of objects) and precision (precision of object placement) of initially well-learned object-scene pairs were measured. Our results showed that overnight, memory accessibility declined similarly in all age groups; memory precision improved more in younger children (YC) compared to older children (OC) and even declined in YA. After a 2-week period, both memory accessibility and precision became worse. Specifically, while age groups showed similar decline in memory accessibility, precision decline was less in YC than in OC and YA. The accessibility and precision of congruent and incongruent information changed similarly with consolidation in all age groups. Taken together, our results showed that, for initially well-learned information, YC have robust memory consolidation, despite their overall lower mnemonic performance compared to OC and YA, which is potentially crucial for stable and precise knowledge accumulation early on in development.

The sounds of birds form the outdoor playlist of our lives. Birds appeal to the public, in part because of the wide variety of interesting sounds they make. This popularity has led to a long history of amateur participation in ornithology, which has recently produced rapid increases in freely available online databases with hundreds of thousands of bird sounds recorded by birdwatchers. These databases provide unique opportunities for teachers to guide students through processes to learn to identify bird species by their sounds. The techniques we summarize here include combining the auditory components of recognizing different types of sounds birds make with visual components of reading sonograms, widely available visual representations of sounds.

The purpose of this experimental study was to examine the effectiveness of the keyword strategy, one of the mnemonic strategies, in learning science concepts for middle school students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) in Türkiye. The participants were 27 middle school students between the 5th and 8th grades receiving supplemental instruction in special education and rehabilitation centers. In addition to the existing supplemental instruction in the centers, the students in the experimental group received science concept instruction based on the keyword strategy. This implementation was carried out once a week for three weeks for each student. The students in the control group followed the regular supplemental instruction in their centers. Data was collected using the science concept measurement tool and the social validity form prepared by the researchers. The data was analyzed via the analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The results indicated a significant improvement in science concept scores for students in the experimental group from pretest to posttest, and this improvement was retained in the scores of the follow-up test conducted six weeks after the implementation. The social validity findings showed that these students generally expressed positive opinions about the science concept instruction based on the keyword strategy. For future research, studies should compare the performance of typically developing students and students with SLD who receive instruction based on the mnemonic strategies.

The main purpose of this study is to determine the effect of using a new type of mnemonic device, utilizing dance steps in teaching Chemistry 7 in the retention rate of students on the properties of metals and non-metals. Different dance mnemonics corresponding to each property of the two types of elements were developed by the researcher. It was then utilized in teaching. The respondents of the study were the 91 grade 7 students of the two classes of the researcher in Science 7 during the first quarter of the S.Y. 2019-2020. Z-test was the statistical treatment used to compare the results of sample-experimental group to that of the population it was taken from. After utilizing the set of dance mnemonics developed corresponding to different properties of metals and non-metals, the samples performed better on the post-test compared to the population which means that using dance steps as mnemonic device increased the retention rate of grade 7 students. This study was limited only in the effect of using dance steps as a mnemonic device to increase the retention rate of grade 7 students in the properties of metals and non-metals.

This study explores the specific language learning strategies (LLS) employed by student-athletes in Higher Education institutions in Taiwan. Given these student-athletes' challenges in balancing academic and athletic commitments, understanding their adoption of LLS provides valuable pedagogical insights. This quantitative research gathered 150 responses, considering variables such as academic year, gender, duration of English study, and athletic specialization. Our findings indicate a moderate overall LLS usage, with a pronounced preference for metacognitive strategies. Strategies such as watching English shows and actively engaging in conversations were particularly favored. Conversely, kinesthetic and mnemonic approaches were less popular, such as acting out words or using rhymes. Delving deeper into the data, there were limited gender-based differences in LLS adoption. However, athletic specialization significantly influenced LLS preferences. Especially, martial arts or combat sports athletes had the highest LLS mean scores across all categories. These results highlight the distinct LLS preferences among Taiwanese student-athletes and suggest potential pedagogical adaptations to enhance their language learning experiences.

The current study evaluated the use of the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instructional approach to teach the TRAP mnemonic (Think before reading, Read a paragraph, Ask what is the main idea/important details, Paraphrase the paragraph) and its impact on youth reading comprehension performance. The TRAP mnemonic was taught to an adolescent female served in a residential treatment facility. An alternating treatment design was used to evaluate reading comprehension performance across oral retell, written retell, and written retell with word processor modalities. Social validity, treatment fidelity, and youth motivation scores are presented with limitations and areas for future research discussed.

The use of a verbal rehearsal strategy (repeating the items to be remembered to oneself in serial order) has been identified as a key factor in explaining working memory (WM) development. However, the debate remains open with regard to the age at which children are able to use it, and the actual benefits of using such a strategy. Numerous methodological constraints to identify WM strategies limit the interpretation of current findings reported in the literature. Moreover, the sequential nature of the cumulative rehearsal strategy means that its use may have a particular influence on maintaining serial order information. The present study aimed to examine: (1) whether children aged 4, 5, and 6 (n = 74, 39 female, n = 61, 29 female, and n = 72, 29 female, respectively) were able to implement an instructed verbal rehearsal strategy; and (2) the benefits of using such a strategy in terms of WM performance. Specifically, we invited children to use cumulative rehearsal, naming (simple rehearsal), or no strategy when performing verbal WM tasks (immediate serial recall and item and order serial recognition). Moreover, the specific influence of instructed strategies on item and serial order maintenance was assessed in the different age groups. While the benefits of using the naming strategy were limited, cumulative rehearsal instruction increased WM performance in all age groups, particularly for serial order information. Our results demonstrate that, as early as 4 years old, children were able to implement, and benefit from a short period of cumulative rehearsal instruction.

The goal of the paper is to pay attention to some important techniques and approaches including adequate designations as a tool for unambiguous understanding and a key to success in solving problems, vivid visual images as a mnemonic techniques, and special formulas as a universal tool for solving typical problems, when teaching medical students of mathematics. The motivation for this paper is to help non-mathematics students understand complicated mathematical topics in an easy, natural, and simple way.

In this single-case study, we evaluated the effects of PESTS, a simple mnemonic strategy to help students remember how to spell difficult words. Our participant was a 9;6-year-old girl with a suspected learning disability in reading and writing. We applied a multiple-baseline design across word sets with one follow-up measurement two weeks after the end of the intervention. The dependent measure was the number of correctly spelled words from a list of 15 difficult nouns. After only a couple of days, the student reached a perfect score on the test and even after two weeks did not commit a single spelling mistake. Although this is only a small single-case study, the findings give reasons for optimism that PESTS can be a very effective tool in supporting students with learning disabilities to overcome their spelling problems.

Teaching and learning of technical terms constitute a major problem for ESP instructors and students. To help the students learn, retain, apply and relate technical terms, a multiple-associations instructional approach that focuses on connecting the printed form of the technical term with its pronunciation (the hidden sounds, double and silent letters, and homophones), with its part of speech, singular or plural form, synonym or antonym, English and Arabic meanings, usage, component parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots), previously-encountered terms and others should be followed while presenting the new technical terms in business, computer science and engineering to the students. Categorization, association, and visualization skills and mnemonic approaches should be emphasized. Mind maps can be used to show those connections. Out of class, extensive listening and reading activities are also encouraged. Quizzes should require the students to make the multiple associations described in the article. The multiple associations instructional approach proved to be effective in enhancing the learning of technical terms by EFL college students. Further recommendations for strategies that can be used in teaching multiple associations are given.

The overall purpose of this study is to explore and understand how students acquire and apply new information (in particular, vocabulary) and how we as instructors can aid in this process. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as a whole tends to prioritize implicit learning but it is my belief that certain content can be understood more profoundly when presented in an explicit manner. This research seeks to determine the role of various mnemonic devices in the learning process and how effective they are for helping university students retain information in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Results collected from this experiment conclude that mnemonic devices can indeed improve a student's vocabulary retention and that Chinese EFL students prefer mnemonic techniques which bridge the linguistic gap between their native language and target language. In application, EFL instructors can utilize the findings of this research to raise a student's awareness of language learning techniques via explicit instruction and increase the volume of their vocabulary retention.

While our perceptual experience seems to unfold continuously over time, episodic memory preserves distinct events for storage and recollection. Previous work shows that stability in encoding context serves to temporally bind individual items into sequential composite events. This phenomenon has been almost exclusively studied using visual and spatial memory paradigms. Here we adapt these paradigms to test the role of speaker regularity for event segmentation of complex auditory information. The results of our auditory paradigm replicate the findings in other sensory modalities--finding greater within-event temporal memory for items within speaker-bound events and greater source memory for items at speaker or event transitions. The task we use significantly extends the ecological validity of past paradigms by allowing participants to encode the stimuli without any suggestions on the part of the experimenter. This unique property of our design reveals that, while memory performance is strongly dependent on self-reported mnemonic strategy, behavioral effects associated with event segmentation are robust to changes in mnemonic strategy. Finally, we consider the effect of serial position on segmentation effects during encoding and present a modeling approach to estimate the independent contribution of event segmentation. These findings provide several lines of evidence suggesting that contextual stability in perceptual features drives segmentation during word listening and supports a modality-independent role for mechanisms involved in event segmentation.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of effective instruction in the STEM subjects, including science. The movement towards increased requirements and expectations in science presents a challenge to both students and teachers as many students with Learning Disabilities (LD) often struggle, particularly in their science classes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of a technology intervention targeting the acquisition of science vocabulary for adolescents with LD in a general education secondary biology classroom. Additionally, a purpose was to examine the usability and feasibility of a tech-based science vocabulary intervention for secondary science teachers. Participants for this study included three secondary students with LD who were enrolled in a biology class. A multiple treatment reversal design was used to compare the effects of a keyword mnemonic vocabulary intervention via index cards or iPod touch on student vocabulary acquisition. All students acquired the content vocabulary equally well during both conditions. It was clear that the students had a strong interest in using technology to increase their grades and engagement; however, the teachers had little access and training on using technology to support their students with disabilities.

Disfluencies such as pauses, "um"s, and "uh"s are common interruptions in the speech stream. Previous work probing memory for disfluent speech shows memory benefits for disfluent compared to fluent materials. Complementary evidence from studies of language production and comprehension have been argued to show that different disfluency types appear in distinct contexts and, as a result, serve as a meaningful cue. If the disfluency-memory boost is a result of sensitivity to these form-meaning mappings, forms of disfluency that cue new upcoming information (fillers and pauses) may produce a stronger memory boost compared to forms that reflect speaker difficulty (repetitions). If the disfluency-memory boost is simply due to the attentional-orienting properties of a disruption to fluent speech, different disfluency forms may produce similar memory benefit. Experiments 1 and 2 compared the relative mnemonic benefit of three types of disfluent interruptions. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the scope of the disfluency-memory boost to probe its cognitive underpinnings. Across the four experiments, we observed a disfluency-memory boost for three types of disfluency that were tested. This boost was local and position dependent, only manifesting when the disfluency immediately preceded a critical memory probe word at the end of the sentence. Our findings reveal a short-lived disfluency-memory boost that manifests at the end of the sentence but is evoked by multiple types of disfluent forms, consistent with the idea that disfluencies bring attentional focus to immediately upcoming material. The downstream consequence of this localized memory benefit is better understanding and encoding of the speaker's message.

Specific to the topic of oxidation-reduction (redox), teachers are obligated by the discipline to prioritise symbolic traditions such as writing equations, documenting oxidation states, and describing changes (e.g., what undergoes oxidation/reduction). Although the chemistry education research community endorses connecting the vertices of Johnstone's triangle, how symbolic traditions undermine chemistry concept development, especially during lesson planning and teaching, is underexplored. To clarify this gap, we use the Mangle of Practice framework to unpack the clash between symbolic vs. particulate-focused instruction. We investigate teachers' (n = 3) co-planning and micro-teaching of a redox learning design at the VisChem Institute-2 using a narrative approach and video research methods. Our results show that the traditions of redox instruction are problematically entrenched in chemistry symbols. Mnemonics, the single replacement reaction scheme, and the written net ionic equation all constrain instruction focused on chemical mechanism and causality in various ways. We assert that the nature of redox knowledge in terms of what is worth teaching and learning must first be re-evaluated for reform-based efforts to succeed. Implications and suggestions for chemistry teaching and research at both secondary and tertiary levels are discussed.

This article explores the use of an interactive mnemonic device called a "Map of Memories" to navigate the museum theater production "Our Footprints," staged in 2017 in the Bergtheil Museum in Durban, South Africa. The Map is an interactive tool used by audience members to explore the exhibits and the performance through connecting their own memories and understandings to what is seen and experienced. The Map, along with the performance, encourages emotional and personal connections to the factual content of the museum exhibitions, with the aim of promoting stronger opportunities for remembering, learning, and new insight.

Vocabulary is the kernel for all language skills; it helps learners to interact with the speakers of that language. This study aims to scrutinize the effect of a short story on developing students' vocabulary. It is an out-product of fieldwork to figure out the useful points for teaching and learning vocabulary through short stories. The test was used to identify the effect of utilising the short story on vocabulary retention. The test was distributed to forty (40) students of Jalna College. The data of the study were collected from students after teaching them the short story for one month--three hours per week. The data was analyzed by using the SPSS software package. The overall results from the test indicated that the participants were very much impressed with the short story. The students successfully recalled most of the words used in the short story context. Some recommendations were suggested for the teachers to include short stories in their lessons and curriculum.

To maximize the advantages of virtual learning, the present study highlights the potential for Internet meme design and creation in English language learning (ELL) courses as an innovative activity that raises student agency, increases multimodal literacy, inculcates intercultural communication, and teaches idiomatic expression. Memes resonate a multimodal feedback loop of popular culture. In the context of language education, multimodal literacy is a necessity for 21st-century education because the affordances of digital learning platforms present "the world told" alongside "the world shown." While some studies feature the usefulness of memes in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning, none have underscored meme creation as a learning activity. To demonstrate the activity in situ, a vignette at two Korean universities features two instructors who ask their respective students (N = 49) to design one meme using an idiom discovered in their ELL materials from a prescribed list, then asks: 1) What common power relations and ideologies emerge in the multimodal discourse of the collected pool of student "idiomemes"? 2) What do the findings tell us about student attitudes and engagement with the activity? 3) What do the findings tell us about the importance of multimodal discourse in EFL learning? Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the student-created Internet memes, the findings reveal that students chose culturally familiar images to complete the assignment, suggesting that their engagement and understanding of multimodal, English discourse increases commensurately with content intuitive to their culture. The implications suggest that empowering students with a measure of agency in expressing culturally relevant, multimodal discourse in ELL course content increases their engagement in virtual classrooms. Designing idiomemes, as a virtual learning activity, is further explored as a curricular augmentation that increases the value of a student's language-learning investment.

It is said that our species use mnemonics -- that "magic of memorization" -- to engrave an enormous amount of information in the brain. Yet, it is unclear how mnemonics affect memory and what the neural underpinnings are. In this electroencephalography study, we examined the hypotheses whether mnemonic training improved processing-efficiency and/or altered encoding-pattern to support memory enhancement. By 22-day training of a digit-image mnemonic (a custom memory technique used by world-class mnemonists), a group of children showed increased short-term memory after training, but with limited gain generalization. This training resulted in regular odd-even neural patterns (i.e., enhanced P200 and theta power during the encoding of digits at even- versus odd- positions in a sequence). Critically, the P200 and theta power effects predicted the training-induced memory improvement. These findings provide evidence of how mnemonics alter encoding pattern, as reflected in functional brain organization, to support memory enhancement.

Human physiology is a prerequisite to pathophysiology for baccalaureate of nursing sciences students and requisite for undergraduate exercise sciences students, in an undergraduate health sciences curriculum of Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Division. This is the first human physiology course required for these first-year students (following anatomy); as such, methods to help students memorize these newly introduced topics during lecture were key. Here we examine the efficacy of mnemonics in an undergraduate health professions human physiology course. During lectures on the nervous system, cell membrane, and action potentials, the author integrated four mnemonics to assist students in memorizing the details of these topics. Student participants (n = 123) completed an anonymous and voluntary qualitative survey. Their responses to the mnemonics survey indicated an overall positive rate [greater than or equal to] 93% of self-reported effectiveness in memorizing these physiological concepts.

Adults with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) increasingly are accessing inclusive college programs to gain academic and employment preparation for future community living. Decision-making and self-determination are two inter-related skills taught in these programs. In this study, we investigated an intervention that combined remote audio coaching (RAC) and a mnemonic strategy to teach employment decision-making skills to three college students with IDD. We evaluated the intervention using the range-bound changing criterion design to assess students' stepwise progress. All students substantially increased their employment decision-making skills, generalized those skills to a novel job coach who was not part of the intervention, and maintained the skills after the intervention was removed. We discuss implications of the procedures and results of this decision-making intervention, as well as the goodness-of-fit of the experimental design for evaluating controlled, gradual skill increases.

Normative word frequency has played a key role in the study of human memory, but there is little agreement as to the mechanism responsible for its effects. To determine whether word frequency affects binding probability or memory precision, we used a continuous reproduction task to examine working memory for spatial positions of words. In three experiments, after studying a list of five words, participants had to report the spatial location of one of them on a circle. Across experiments we varied word frequency, presentation rate, and the proportion of low-frequency words on each trial. A mixture model dissociated memory precision, binding failure, and guessing rate parameters from the continuous distribution of errors. On trials that contained only low- or only high-frequency words, low-frequency words led to a greater degree of error in recalling the associated location. This was due to a higher word-location binding failure and not due to differences in memory precision or guessing rates. Slowing down the presentation rate eliminated the word frequency effect by reducing binding failures for low-frequency words. Mixing frequencies in a single trial hurt high-frequency and helped low-frequency words. These findings support the idea that word frequency can lead to both positive and negative mnemonic effects depending on a trade-off between an HF encoding advantage and a LF retrieval cue advantage. We suggest that (1) low-frequency words require more resources for binding, (2) that these resources recover gradually over time, and that (3) binding fails when these resources are insufficient.

Decision-making is the central element of self-determination, requiring targeted, systematic instruction to learn. In this study, researchers developed a multicomponent intervention, "What ELSE about this job?", to teach job decision-making skills to college students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The intervention coupled remote audio coaching (RAC) with a mnemonic device, 'ELSE', to guide students to make decisions about whether certain jobs would be a good fit for them. The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the intervention and determine whether the skills would maintain once the intervention was removed. All students who received the intervention substantially increased their ability to make job decisions. Additionally, all participants maintained the skills upon removal of the intervention, and showed signs of generalizing their skills to novel job coaches and web-based job search apps. Implications and future research are discussed.

Vector cross product transformations are essential components in general physics. The numerous mnemonic devices catered towards each potential transformation result in confusion, defeating their purpose of reducing learning barriers. Therefore, a general mnemonic device, subject-environment interaction or the subject, is proposed to help students in determining the resulting vector direction of various vector cross products.

We examined the efficacy of a combined electronic essay writing and editing mnemonic driven strategy with 24 college students in a two-year postsecondary program for students with developmental disabilities. We used a pre-posttest experimental design with random assignment to treatment/control groups. During 26 sessions each consisting of 50 min., students in the treatment group received essay writing and editing mnemonic-driven instruction that included explicit instruction and graphic organizers. Students used PCs and Microsoft Word to analyze essay-test questions, complete pre-writing planning, construct essay responses, and edit their work. Univariate analysis of posttests revealed a significant positive difference for the treatment group in using the essay writing and editing strategy steps, and in constructing essay responses. Following the end of the intervention, students responded to an essay prompt. The treatment group significantly outperformed the control group in applying strategy steps and produced better quality essays for ideas/organization, length, and spelling errors.

One of the challenges that students face is how to remember and preserve information from their teachers accurately over an extended period. Shedding a light on memory retention--both accuracy and longevity--is the Old Testament, which emphasizes the effectiveness of repetition as a learning process. This approach to learning by repetition involves both teachers and parents working together (who), both at home and in public (where) with spaced repetition (when), and the use of mnemonic devices (how). The purpose of this research is to describe the usefulness of the educational principles in the Old Testament to the field of Christian education, with support by cognitive psychology to validate this effectiveness of this learning process.

This study aims to reveal the effect of using mnemonic strategies on student success in the teaching of history components in social studies, the permanence of their knowledge, and the students'opinions about this practice. The nonequivalent pretest--posttest control group model based on the quasi-experimental method was used in the study. After the experimental process, focus group interviews were conducted with two groups selected from the experimental group. It can be said that mnemonic devices contribute to the students' academic success and make the students' knowledge more retentive in the teaching of history components in social studies. Furthermore, in the students' views, it was seen that the course activities carried out with these strategies were especially fun and retentive, contributing to both increasing interest and better understanding of the course.

In a quasi-experimental study, kindergarten teachers taught children mnemonic stories to orient the confusable letters "b" and "d." In the first week's stories, intervention teachers introduced the left-to-right sequence of features for these letters with "the bat hits the ball" and "a dime rolls up to a domino." The second week's stories dramatized how to print these letters efficiently. Comparison teachers taught their normal literacy curriculum. Intervention students significantly outperformed students in the comparison group in letter naming and letter printing. They gained accuracy in letter recognition that transferred to selecting the correct word from similar "b" and "d" words and in reading simple words with "b" and "d." These findings support a new path to establish reliable recognition of letters that vary only in orientation.

With the shift to Zoom instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic, the professorial 'self' of many faculty was primarily experienced as virtual. Understanding the virtual professorial self is fundamental to the dialogical teacher-students relationship in synchronous teaching. As additional forms of technology inevitably are brought into synchronous teaching, the professorial self is situated within human, non-human, and more-than-human relationships. This paper presents the novel method of mnemonic ethnography to access and understand the materiality in the intersubjective consciousness of the virtual professorial self of digital teaching. We explicate mnemonic ethnography's materialist orientations and practices including how mnemonic ethnography creates memory as data. The approach is illustrated through our study of the virtual professorial selves of faculty who used Zoom to teach during the pandemic. We suggest that mnemonic ethnography can reveal the materiality of virtual synchronous teaching in ways that guide us in navigating the future of online university education.

This study investigated the effectiveness of the self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) instructional approach with middle school youth with behavior challenges served in a residential treatment facility. Youth were taught the TRAP ("T"hink before reading, "R"ead a paragraph, "A"sk what is the main idea/important details, "P"araphrase the paragraph; Mason et al.) mnemonic as a means of increasing reading comprehension as measured through oral retell. Using a multiple-probe across participant single case design, a functional relation between the TRAP mnemonic and oral retell scores was observed. Treatment fidelity, social validity, and academic engagement are presented. Implications for practitioners, limitations, and areas for future directions are outlined.

Oslo Accords have stringently underscored that both rivalries, the Palestinians and the Israelis, must abstain from incitement to terror and violence. Their educational systems, consequently, have to refrain from convulsive, fundamentalist, and heinous skirmishes leading to stalled reconciliation. History school textbooks are deemed, from both parties, so relevant that they inherently embody their official memories. Regarded as the representations of the past and the formal institutions of the group, official memory incarnates the true existence of one's nation as it gives prominence to its history. To stave off potential detriments that may menace a country's viability, official memory is deployed as a shield against enticement, incitement, and lies' mongering. The present article indulges into a comparative rhetorical inspection of Israeli and Palestinian history school textbooks. Since it falls into the scope of argumentation and persuasion, rhetoric stands for the theoretical background of the study. The latter seeks to unveil the various rhetorical devices deployed by Palestinians and Israelis while conceiving their educational history textbooks to highlight the interconnectedness between history and official memory, on one hand, and the extent to which both school textbooks comply with Oslo Accords, on other hand.

The Production Effect (PE) is a memory phenomenon, referring to memory advantage for produced items (read aloud) over non-produced items (read silently). Since vocalizing shows consistent memory benefits, it has been suggested as a mnemonic that can be used to assist vocabulary learning. The present study investigated the PE in L2 vocabulary learning and examined whether learning is durable over time. Hebrew speaking students learned new words in Esperanto, either by vocal production or by no-production. Retention interval varied between participants -- from immediate, 1-week, and 2-weeks following the learning phase. The results showed a significant PE -- a memory advantage for vocally produced over non-produced words across all learning intervals. Memory performance was higher in the immediate tests than in the delayed tests. The produced words were more durable and showed less memory decay over time. These findings support using vocalization as a simple yet effective memory tool in the first stages of L2 learning, as a classroom activity and as a homework practice assignment.

This paper draws on a study that examined the experiences of four high-achieving Pasifika physiotherapy degree level students to identify factors contributing to their success. As peer students, they identified five approaches that assisted them to become high achievers within the tertiary environment. This paper refers specifically to these approaches as peer-based Pasifika pedagogies (PbPP) and broadly as culturally responsive practices. The aim of this paper is to examine how Pasifika pedagogies, such as PbPP provide culturally responsive practices that can address the 'culture of silence' while promoting the va relationality, the cultural nuances and norms of their worldview as well as aligning it with modern pedagogies or tools to enhance success among Pasifika students in the New Zealand tertiary education context.

Some previous studies have shown that increased stress hormone levels have beneficial effects on memory encoding; however, there is no clear consensus on which encoding-related processes are affected by stress hormones. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between interindividual differences in neuroendocrine response to acute stress and interference resolution (i.e., mnemonic discrimination). Participants were healthy young adults who were exposed to physical and psychological stressors (Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test). Then participants completed the modified version of the Mnemonic Similarity Task. Specifically, they were presented with photographs of emotionally arousing (negative and positive) and nonarousing (neutral) scenes followed by a recognition memory test where they saw a mixture of old and new stimuli. Crucially, participants were also presented with critical lure items, that is, visually similar stimuli to ones presented at encoding. We found that participants who had higher cortisol response to the stressors were better in discriminating between the studied items and their visually similar lures. This effect was present for the arousing and nonarousing materials as well. These findings suggest that increased hormonal response to acute stress has a beneficial impact on the formation of distinct, nonoverlapping, unique memory representations, and consequently, on episodic memory encoding processes.

Teaching using the principles of mathematical resilience can lead to a broad range of implementations with different emphases, all intended to mitigate the development of mathematical anxiety in learners and its attendant problems. This article considers 12 primary teachers' responses to the challenge of developing mathematical resilience within their practice. In pairs, these teachers conducted a small-scale study in their classrooms on a chosen aspect of mathematical resilience, supported by termly meetings. The reports made by the participant teachers form the main part of the data. The teachers were inspired to change how they worked with their learners and reported many positive outcomes. The agency which some teachers exercised influenced not only their outworking of the ideas, but also the fidelity with which they adopted the principles underpinning mathematical resilience. The connections and tensions shown here between agency and fidelity have wider implications for successful implementation of similar change efforts.

A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to pronunciations and meanings and stored in memory. Suggestions for teaching these skills are offered. These include picture mnemonics to teach letters, articulation to teach phonemic segmentation, and sound streaming to teach decoding. It is important to teach decoding with grapheme-phoneme subunits rather than syllabic units. It is important to read words in text to bond meanings to spellings in memory. It is important for beginners to read words in text aloud rather than silently. Showing students spellings of new vocabulary words when they are taught improves their memory for the words. Students progress through four alphabetic phases in acquiring these skills. Systematic phonics instruction facilitates movement through the phases.

Presenting information in a perceptually disfluent format sometimes enhances memory. Recent work examining 1 type of perceptual disfluency manipulation, Sans Forgetica typeface, has yielded discrepant findings; some studies find support for the idea that the disfluent typeface improves memory whereas others do not. The current study examined a boundary condition that determines when disfluency is and is not beneficial to learning to explore this discrepancy. Specifically, we investigated whether knowledge about an upcoming test (high test expectancy) versus not (low test expectancy) helps clarify when mnemonic benefits arise for perceptually disfluent stimuli. In Experiment 1 (preregistered, N = 231), we found that Sans Forgetica is a memory-improving desirable difficulty, but only when there was no expectation of a final test. In Experiment 2 (preregistered, N = 232), we conceptually replicated the Sans Forgetica effect using a cued-recall test. In Experiment 3 (preregistered, N = 232), we ruled out a time-on-task explanation while replicating the results of Experiment 2. Though these data provide some evidence of San Forgetica's mnemonic benefits, caution should be taken in interpreting these results. Not only were the effect sizes moderate, but low test expectancy may not be realistically achievable in actual educational contexts. Though more research is warranted, we echo our prior arguments that students wanting to remember more and forget less should stick to other, more empirically supported desirable difficulties.

People often misrecognize objects that are similar to those they have previously encountered. These mnemonic discrimination errors are attributed to shared memory representations (gist) typically characterized in terms of meaning. In two experiments, we investigated multiple semantic and perceptual relations that may contribute: at the concept level, a feature-based measure of concept confusability quantified each concept's tendency to activate other similar concepts via shared features; at the item level, rated item exemplarity indexed the degree to which the specific depicted objects activated their particular concepts. We also measured visual confusability over items using a computational model of vision, and an index of color confusability. Participants studied single (Experiment 1, N = 60) or multiple (Experiment 2, N = 60) objects for each basic-level concept, followed by a recognition memory test including studied items, similar lures, and novel items. People were less likely to recognize studied items with high concept confusability, and less likely to falsely recognize their lures. This points to weaker basic-level semantic gist representations for objects with more confusable concepts because of greater emphasis on coarse processing of shared features relative to fine-grained processing of individual concepts. In contrast, people were more likely to misrecognize lures that were better exemplars of their concept, suggesting that enhanced basic-level semantic gist processing increased errors due to gist across items. False recognition was also more frequent for more visually confusable lures. The results implicate semantic similarity at multiple levels and highlight the importance of perceptual as well as semantic relations.

When our experience violates our predictions, it is adaptive to update our knowledge to promote a more accurate representation of the world and facilitate future predictions. Theoretical models propose that these mnemonic prediction errors should be encoded into a distinct memory trace to prevent interference with previous, conflicting memories. We investigated this proposal by repeatedly exposing participants to pairs of sequentially presented objects (A [right arrow] B), thus evoking expectations. Then, we violated participants' expectations by replacing the second object in the pairs with a novel object (A [right arrow] C). The following item memory test required participants to discriminate between identical old items and similar lures, thus testing detailed and distinctive item memory representations. In two experiments, mnemonic prediction errors enhanced item memory: Participants correctly identified more old items as old when those items violated expectations during learning, compared with items that did not violate expectations. This memory enhancement for C items was only observed when participants later showed intact memory for the related A [right arrow] B pairs, suggesting that strong predictions are required to facilitate memory for violations. Following up on this, a third experiment reduced prediction strength prior to violation and subsequently eliminated the memory advantage of violations. Interestingly, mnemonic prediction errors did not increase gist-based mistakes of identifying old items as similar lures or identifying similar lures as old. Enhanced item memory in the absence of gist-based mistakes suggests that violations enhanced memory for items' details, which could be mediated via distinct memory traces. Together, these results advance our knowledge of how mnemonic prediction errors promote memory formation.

While the storage capacity is limited, accumulating studies have indicated that working memory (WM) can be improved by cognitive training. However, understanding how exactly the brain copes with limited WM capacity and how cognitive training optimizes the brain remains inconclusive. Given the hierarchical functional organization of WM, we hypothesized that the activation profiles along the posterior-anterior gradient of the frontal and parietal cortices characterize WM load and training effects. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 51 healthy volunteers and adopted a parametric WM paradigm and training method. In contrast to exclusively strengthening the activation of posterior areas, a broader range of activation concurrently occurred in the anterior areas to cope with increased memory load for all subjects at baseline. Moreover, there was an imbalance in the responses of the posterior and anterior areas to the same increment of 1 item at different load levels. Although a general decrease in activation after adaptive training, the changes in the posterior and anterior areas were distinct at different memory loads. Particularly, we found that the activation gradient between the posterior and anterior areas was significantly increased at load 4-back after adaptive training, and the changes were correlated with improvement in WM performance. Together, our results demonstrate a shift in the predominant role of posterior and anterior areas in the frontal and parietal cortices when approaching WM capacity limits. Additionally, the training-induced performance improvement likely benefits from the elevated neural efficiency reflected in the increased activation gradient between the posterior and anterior areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mnemonics are not only tools that empower memory but also have a significant role in qualitatively transforming mental functions and, hence, consciousness in general. A specific type of mnemonics is autobiographical mnemonics (AM) constructed of spatial, temporal, and semantic dimensions used in a naturalist form by individuals about their own experiences. This paper proposes a spatial–temporal mnemonic that transforms AM from a naturalist level into an artificial one. We consider allowing the intellect and consciousness to grasp the abstract flow of time in the global context of geography will contribute to setting the stage for creativity. By explicitly representing the abstract time–space theater, the intellect (the world view) is more able to reflect the abstract laws of reality (the world), hence, to make the intellect sphere objectively equipped to externalize the emerged meanings (the internalized reality) that reflect the internal content of experience and, hence, make sense of them as a crucial function in creative activity. The paper is a theoretical and methodological step for the empirical part of the proposal when the mnemonic should be used as a training tool to empower creativity factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attentional engagement is known to vary on a moment-to-moment basis. However, few self-report methods can effectively capture dynamic fluctuations in attentional engagement over time. In the current paper, we evaluated the utility of stimulated recall, a method wherein individuals are asked to remember their subjective states while using a mnemonic cue, for the measurement of temporal changes in attentional engagement. Participants were asked to watch a video lecture, during which we assessed their in-the-moment levels of attentional engagement using intermittent thought probes. Then, we used stimulated recall by cueing participants with short video clips from the lecture to retrospectively assess the levels of attentional engagement they had experienced when they first watched those clips within the lecture. Experiment 1 assessed the statistical overlap between in-the-moment and video-stimulated ratings. Experiment 2 assessed the generalizability of video-stimulated recall across different types of lectures. Experiment 3 assessed the impact of presenting video-stimulated probe clips in non-chronological order. Experiment 4 assessed the effect of video-stimulated recall on its own. Across all experiments, we found statistically robust correspondence between in-the-moment and video-stimulated ratings of attentional engagement, illustrating a strong convergence between these two methods of assessment. Taken together, our findings indicate that stimulated recall provides a new and practical methodological approach that can accurately capture dynamic fluctuations in subjective attentional states over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]