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This article presents the results of a research project carried out in 2017 at the Agricultural High School of Universidad Autónoma Chapingo in Texcoco, Mexico, with the aim of determining which vocabulary strategies students used, as well as the frequency of their use. A Likert-scale questionnaire with 5 points, adapted from Easterbrook (2013), was distributed to 107 students with an elementary level of English proficiency (i.e., Level A2), corresponding to the Common European Framework of Reference of Languages (CEFRL) (Council of Europe, 2001). The results showed that the participants used vocabulary-learning strategies (VLSs) at a medium level based on the mean statistical measure used. Out of the 51 VLSs included in the questionnaire, 13 experienced a high level of use, 21 a medium level of use and 17 a low level of use. Identifying new words in different sources and predicting their meaning from context stood out among the high-use strategies. More than half of the medium-use strategies were of mnemonic type and various memorization approaches. Most low-use strategies involved organizing vocabulary information by theme, rote memorization and review. Overall, the pattern of strategy use suggests that the participants in this study did invest time in discovering the meanings of new words they encountered in context, but their effort was less focused reviewing vocabulary as a means to commit them to the long-term memory. This diagnostic examination of VLSs showed that students may not possess effective means to acquiring vocabulary and therefore, instruction need to include familiarizing students with strategies for them to effectively acquire, store and retrieve vocabulary items.

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.

This article provides two additional mnemonics that can serve to help undergraduate students recall how to apply the rules of writing net ionic equations. These mnemonics were incorporated into dozens of lecture and laboratory class content, which includes hundreds of undergraduate (health professions and physical science major) students. As a supplement to precipitation reaction general chemistry course content, students noted the ease of use and proficiency in recall of the net ionic equation rules, when employing these rote learning tools. When writing net ionic equations students can recite the following: "Take a MINute" and "Don't touch the LeGS!"

The findings of the study indicate that students prefer to engage in the vocabulary learning strategies that would be most appealing to them and that would entail less manipulation of the language. Of the four vocabulary memorizing strategies cited in the study (rote repetition, structural associations, semantic strategies, and mnemonic keyword techniques), students apparently tended to favor the second and the third ones, though rote repetition remains appealing to some of them. Mnemonic devices such as keyword method were rather unpopular to most of the students because they would involve the learners in more active performance of the target language.

In our exploration of the order of operations we focus on the following claim: "In the conventional order of operations, division should be performed before multiplication." This initially surprising claim is based on the acronym BEDMAS, a popular mnemonic used in Canada to assist students in remembering the order of operations. The claim was voiced by a teacher and then presented for consideration to a class of prospective elementary school teachers. We investigate the participants' understanding of the order of operations, focusing on the operations of multiplication and division. We report on participants' ways of resolving a cognitive conflict faced as a result of relying on memorized mnemonics.

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.

The importance of learning mathematical vocabulary is vital for the development of proficiency in mathematics. In an effort to improve students' mathematical performance, educators must use research-validated instructional methods to teach important mathematical vocabulary. Mnemonic instruction is a set of evidenced-based strategies used to improve achievement and attitudes toward learning by helping students connect new information to prior knowledge. One especially effective mnemonic instructional approach is the keyword strategy. Using a keyword strategy, students connect familiar words with new vocabulary words and an illustration to help learn the new vocabulary word meanings. The purpose of this article is to describe the instructional procedures required to implement the keyword strategy to improve learning of essential mathematical vocabulary.

This article describes a variety of ways learners can help themselves remember new words, choosing the ones that best suit their learning styles. It is asserted that repeated exposure to new lexical items using a variety of means is the most consistent predictor of retention. The use of verbal, visual, tactile, textual, kinesthetic, and sonic memory aids can and should be introduced to learners as a viable means of improving their ability to recall words. Because each student has his or her own individual learning style, it is important that learners be presented with a variety of strategies from which to choose. In addition to increasing the range, depth, and recall of vocabulary, these techniques also offer learners the opportunity to become more aware of their individual learning styles, an important step on the path to becoming more confident and autonomous learners. The methods offered include the following: association/elaboration method; finger method; grouping method; imagery method; keyword method; loci method; narrative method; peg method; physical response method; pictorial method; word chain method; semantic mapping method; visual method; spatial grouping method; and the sound representation method. (KFT)

Most beginners are introduced to plant diversity through identification keys, which develop differentiation skills but not species memorisation. We propose that mnemonics, memorable "name clues" linking a species name with morphological characters, are a complementary learning tool for promoting species memorisation. In the first of two experiments, 64 adults in a group-learning environment were taught species identification using mnemonics, an educational card game and a text-based dichotomous key. In the second experiment, 43 adults in a self-directed learning environment were taught species identification using mnemonics and a pictorial dichotomous key. In both experiments, mnemonics produced the highest retention rates of species identification based on vegetative characters. The educational value of these findings is discussed for vegetative plant identification and broader applications.

The Krebs Cycle is a highly taught biochemical pathway that is traditionally difficult to learn. Twenty-seven undergraduate students were randomized to a rote memorization arm or to a mnemonic arm. They were given a pre-test, then shown a lecture corresponding to their assigned method, and then given an immediate Week 0 post-test and a Week 4 post-test. Groups scored comparably low on the pre-test (p = 0.7113). Students in the mnemonic arm performed better on the Week 0 post-test than those using rote (p = 0.0055). By Week 4, there was evidence of knowledge decay, with both arms' having comparably low scores (mnemonic vs. rote, p = 0.3739). The mnemonic assists in rapid acquisition of knowledge but probably has to be reviewed iteratively over time to demonstrate its full potential over rote memorization. A limited number of students from only one school was used.

Classroom demonstrations of empirically supported learning and memory strategies have the potential to boost students' knowledge about their own memory and convince them to change the way they approach memory tasks in and beyond the classroom. Students in a "Human Learning and Memory" course learned about the "Method of Loci" (MoL) mnemonic technique, then created and used their own Memory Palaces based on campus locations to remember a grocery list. Pretest to posttest improvements in memory for the serially recalled list, along with significant increases in self-reported use of MoL in daily life, suggest that this activity may improve knowledge and application of this powerful memory strategy. More broadly, these types of activities can strengthen undergraduates' metacognitive sophistication.

This anthropological study of a higher education British Madrasah was undertaken to increase our awareness of the spectrum of sensory experiences that shape Islamic pedagogy. We started our anthropological study from an Islamic premise of the inseparable nature of knowledge and the sacred. Pedagogy is defined as not a matter of simple methods and technique but as a holistic approach that deals with the capacity to form the human person. Islamic pedagogy is represented by the heartfelt interactions between the teacher and learner through orality, facilitating memorization, and the didactic approach towards sacred texts. This research has explored the sensoria of a British Madrasah from a spiritual approach and this provides the foundation for shaping our understanding of the madrasah concept of Islamic pedagogy. An Al-Ghazali's mystical-theoretical approach toward learning is evident in this research in defining the madrasah as a spiritual rather than social construct, and is optimized by the embodiment of learning.

Objective: To determine whether 7- to 12-year-old boys with ADHD, relative to non-ADHD age-mates, exhibit greater difficulty learning and remembering object locations. The second purpose was to examine the functional utility of mnemonic strategies, specifically speech-to-self, used by boys with and without ADHD. Method: Boys with and without ADHD were videotaped while completing a well-established, laboratory-based object location learning and memory task. Results: Boys with ADHD evinced a deficit while learning the location of objects and employed less sophisticated forms of private speech during the memory task. Conclusion: These findings reveal details about the utility of private speech during spatial working memory performance and further a theoretical understanding of ADHD. (Contains 1 note and 3 tables.)

We examined associative and item recognition using the maintenance rehearsal paradigm. Our intent was to control for mnemonic strategies; to produce a low, graded level of learning; and to provide evidence of the role of attention in long-term memory. An advantage for low-frequency words emerged in both associative and item recognition at very low levels of learning. This early emergence casts doubt on explanations based on the traditional concept of recollection. A comparison of false alarms supports a role for item information or the joint use of cues but not familiarity in producing associative false alarms. We may also have found a way to measure the amount of attention being paid to a to-be-learned item or pair, independently of memory performance on the attended item. This result may be an important step in determining whether coherent theories about the role of attention in long- and short-term memory can be created. (Contains 2 footnotes and 9 tables.)

Over the last century many individuals with exceptional memory have been studied and tested in the laboratory. This article studies Chao Lu, who set a Guinness World Record by memorizing 67,890 decimals of pi. Chao Lu's superior self-paced memorization of digits is shown through analyses of study times and verbal reports to be mediated by mnemonic encoding and retrieval processes. Furthermore, Chao Lu's development of his superior memory for decimals of pi is consistent with his engagement in thousands of hours of memorization. In contrast to most other studied memorists, who have digit spans over 15 digits, Chao Lu exhibited a digit span in only the normal range. Implications for different types of memorization skills and associated practice activities are discussed. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

Are resources in visual working memory allocated in a continuous or a discrete fashion? On one hand, flexible resource models suggest that capacity is determined by a central resource pool that can be flexibly divided such that items of greater complexity receive a larger share of resources. On the other hand, if capacity in working memory is defined in terms of discrete storage "slots," then observers may be able to determine which items are assigned to a slot but not how resources are divided between stored items. To test these predictions, the authors manipulated the relative complexity of the items to be stored while holding the number items constant. Although mnemonic resolution declined when set size increased (Experiment 1), resolution for a given item was unaffected by large variations in the complexity of the other items to be stored when set size was held constant (Experiments 2-4). Thus, resources in visual working memory are distributed in a discrete slot-based fashion, even when interitem variations in complexity motivate an asymmetrical division of resources across items. (Contains 5 footnotes and 8 figures.)

Recent work on adult metacognition indicates that although metacognitive monitoring often guides control operations, sometimes it follows control operations and is based on the feedback from them. Consistent with this view, in self-paced learning, judgments of learning (JOLs) made at the end of each study trial "decreased" with the amount of time spent studying the item, suggesting that JOLs are based on the memorizing effort heuristic that easily learned items are more likely to be remembered. Study 1 extended investigation to primary school children. Whereas for third to sixth graders (9- to 12-year-olds) JOLs decreased with increasing study time (ST), no such relationship was found for first and second graders (7- and 8-year-olds). For both age groups, however, recall decreased with ST, supporting the validity of the memorizing effort heuristic. Self-reports (Study 2) disclosed the belief that recall should tend to increase with ST. The results bring to the fore the importance of mnemonic cues that shape metacognitive feelings even among primary school children. These cues lie in the very feedback that learners gain on-line from task performance rather than in metacognitive knowledge, and their use may also contribute to increased monitoring accuracy with age. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the memory effects of the postgraduates' memorizing Everyday English from 30 to 100 using the Natural Numeral Imagery Memory (Method by memorizing the concrete objects associated with the shapes of Arabic numeral to produce marvelous imagination, MMOASAPMI). The results indicated as follows: Firstly, the postgraduates, who applied the MMOASAPMI to memorize and recall the Everyday English from 30 to 100, could recite them well in sequence backward, forward, and randomly. The reaction time of reciting any sentence randomly is no more than 2 seconds. Secondly, it can transform the materials of the short-term memory into long-term memory quickly, and effectively prevent them from the interference of proactive and retroactive inhibition, so it is useful for keeping memorized information with less loss and remaining for a long period. Thirdly, with the materials in strong sequence, large quantities and the difficulty to memorize, it is an extremely effective method for memorizing them. Fourthly, the keys to improving the memory efficiency are the well-storing skills of memory, storing methods, and memory clues.

When given the opportunity to take notes in memory tasks, children sometimes make notes that are not useful. The current study examined the role that task constraints might play in the production of nonmnemonic notes. In Experiment 1, children played one easy and one difficult memory game twice, once with the opportunity to make notes and once without that opportunity. More children produced functional notations for the easier task than for the more difficult task, and their notations were beneficial to memory performance. Experiment 2 found that the majority of children who at first made nonmnemonic notations were able to produce functional notations with minimal training, and there was no significant difference in notation quality or memory performance between spontaneous and trained note takers. Experiment 3 revealed that the majority of children could transfer their training to a novel task. The results suggest that children's production of nonmnemonic notes may be due in part to a lack of knowledge regarding what task information is important to represent or how to represent it in their notes rather than to an inability to make functional notes in general. (Contains 7 figures and 2 tables.)

For students pursuing careers in medical fields, knowledge of technical and medical terminology is prerequisite to being able to solve problems in their respective disciplines and professions. The Dean Vaughn Medical Terminology 350 Total Retention System, also known as Medical Terminology 350 (25), is a mnemonic instructional and learning strategy that combines mental imagery and keyword mnemonic elaboration processes to help students recall the scientific meaning of Greek and Latin word parts. High school students in Anatomy and Physiology classes at a career technology center were divided into experimental (Medical Terminology 350), control (rote memorization), or combination (Medical Terminology 350 and rote memorization) groups and completed pre- and posttests of standardized word recall tests. Students in the Dean Vaughn Medical Terminology 350 Total Retention System group achieved significantly greater pre- to posttest word recall improvement compared with students in both the rote memorization (P less than or equal to 0.0001) and combined rote memorization and Medical Terminology 350 (P less than or equal to 0.05) groups. There appeared to be a dose-dependent response as the pre- to posttest gain in word recall scores increased as exposure to the treatment increased. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)

This essay explores the educational implications of the thought of Michel de Montaigne and Friedrich Nietzsche on the subject of memory. It explores the sorts of cultural memory practices that Nietzsche has called "mnemotechnics", that is, the aspects of memory use that allow human beings to live life more fully. Nietzsche and Montaigne's work is explored because their work offers a different, and much more philosophically oriented, perspective on memory than is commonly discussed when educators speak of memory. Nietzsche and Montaigne show how remembering and forgetting might be understood more thoroughly and deployed with more finesse. The case is made that such deployments, such mnemotechnics, have great relevance for enhancing the agency of students.

Memory plasticity, or the ability to improve one's memory performance through instruction and training, is known to decline during adulthood. However, direct comparisons among middle childhood, adulthood, and old age are lacking. The authors examined memory plasticity in an age-comparative multisession training study. One hundred and eight participants ages 9-10, 11-12, 20-25, and 65-78 years learned and practiced an imagery-based mnemonic technique to encode and retrieve words by location cues. Individuals of all ages were able to acquire and optimize use of the technique. Older adults and children showed similar baseline performance and improvement through mnemonic instruction. However, in line with tenets from life-span psychology (P. B. Baltes, 1987), children profited more from mnemonic practice and reached higher levels of final performance than did older adults.

Recent demonstrations of "reconsolidation" suggest that memories can be modified when they are reactivated. Reconsolidation has been observed in human procedural memory and in implicit memory in infants. This study asks whether episodic memory undergoes reconsolidation. College students learned a list of objects on Day 1. On Day 2, they received a reminder or not, and then learned a second list. Memory for List 1 was tested immediately on Day 2 (Experiment 2) or on Day 3 (Experiment 1). Although the reminder did not moderate the number of items recalled from List 1 on either day, subjects who received a reminder incorrectly intermixed items from the second list when recalling List 1 on Day 3. Experiment 2 showed that this effect does not occur immediately and thus is time-dependent. The reminder did not affect memory for List 2 on Day 3 (Experiment 3), demonstrating that modification occurred only for the original memory (List 1). The study demonstrates the crucial role of reminders for the modification of episodic memory, that reconsolidation of episodic memory is time-dependent, and, in contrast to previous reconsolidation findings, that reconsolidation is also a constructive process, one that supports the incorporation of new information in memory.

Judgments of learning (JOLs) underestimate the increase in recall that occurs with repeated study (the underconfidence-with-practice effect; UWP). The authors explore an account in terms of a foresight bias in which JOLs are inflated when the to-be-recalled target highlights aspects of the cue that are not transparent when the cue appears alone and the tendency of practice to alleviate bias by providing learners with cues pertinent to recall. In 3 experiments the UWP effect was strongest for items that induce a foresight bias, but delaying JOLs reduced the debiasing effects of practice, thereby moderating the UWP effect. This occurred when delayed JOLs were prompted by the cue alone (like during testing), not when prompted by the cue-target pair (like during study).

The Lexical Approach (LA) is founded on the belief that, in order to achieve a high level of accuracy "with fluency," learners of a foreign language need to commit to memory vast numbers of multi-word expressions. However, since it is far from clear that the methodology currently associated with the LA holds out well-founded hope that phrase learning on such a vast scale is widely achievable in ordinary school-based foreign language teaching, supplementary methods and strategies seem to be called for. It is also possible that a change is needed concerning the criteria for deciding which multi-word expressions should be focused on in teaching and materials writing. Thus far, the criteria most commonly advocated seem to be those of frequency and utility. If it were the case that certain moderately common classes of multi-word lexis were relatively easy to remember on account of salient phonological patterning (e.g., alliteration), it could then be argued that a third criterion, that of memorability, ought to be given additional weight. This paper reports results of controlled experiments which indicate that multi-word expressions which alliterate are indeed more memorable than ones which show no such salient phonological patterning. Implications for FLT methodology are briefly outlined.

Memoria, one of the original five canons of rhetoric, has been described as a lost art. While "word-for-word" memorization and presentation of classic speeches was an important component of rhetorical training that "persisted through the middle ages," it receives no more than a brief mention (usually in the sections outlining different types of delivery) in most contemporary public speaking texts. The ancients believed that memory, and therefore the development of memory skills, was an important component of an education in rhetoric because it provided the student with the mental discipline necessary to craft, recall, and present oral arguments. For many modern students, the opportunities to practice memorization skills normally do not extend beyond cramming information for exams, and this sort of memorization rarely, if ever, results in a public presentation. This article introduces the oratorical address presentation, an activity that aims to challenge students' memorization and speaking skills by having them present an excerpt from a previously delivered speech. This memorized presentation helps students start to learn effective techniques for structuring, wording, and presenting oral arguments. The process of memorizing and presenting a short excerpt helps students understand how different public speakers can express the same ideas in different ways. A list of references and suggested readings is included. (Contains 1 note.)

In acquiring mnemonic strategies, children may demonstrate a utilization deficiency phase in which they successfully execute a strategy but it does not facilitate memory performance. The present experiment suggests that utilization deficiencies are not a developmental phenomenon per se, but rather a byproduct of diminished working memory capacity for any reason (i.e., maturation, knowledge base, context, individual differences, etc.). Adults performing a series of study-test memory trials using nonsense words exhibited characteristics of utilization deficiencies, with increased strategy use not contributing to increased memory performance. Furthermore, adults' working memory capacity modified the effect. Implications of these findings for developmental models of strategy acquisition are discussed.

The Keyword Method (KWM) of vocabulary learning is a mnemonic method designed to help students learn foreign vocabulary. It has been shown to be effective over several other memorization strategies. The present experiment was designed to explore the cognition underlying the effectiveness of the KWM. Specifically, both the degree of cognitive engagement with the method and visual encoding were examined as possible sources. Subjects were tested in a 2 (imagery level)x2 (processing strategy) mixed design. Each subject was asked to memorize 30 Latin vocabulary words, divided evenly among high- and low-imagery value words. Subjects were either provided with both keywords and interactions (the Given condition) or instructions to generate their own keywords and interactions (the Self-Generated condition). Retention was tested in both immediate and delayed post-tests. Results revealed a strong effect of imagery level in both post-tests. No significant main effect of processing strategy or interactions between imagery and processing were observed in either post-test. Results indicate that the KWM is effective because it provides a meaningful visual image upon which to base memory for a new word's meaning. They suggest that there is some flexibility in how the KWM is used. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

A rapidly learned odor discrimination task based on spontaneous foraging behavior of the rat was used to evaluate the role of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors (NMDARs) in ongoing memory consolidation. Rats were trained in a single session to discriminate among three odors, one of which was associated with palatable food reward. Previous experiments showed that the NMDAR antagonist DL-APV induced amnesia for this task when injected immediately after training. In the present study, memory was reactivated 24 h after training by exposure to the rewarded odor within the experimental context after which rats received an intracerebroventricular injection of APV. Combined reactivation-drug treatment induced profound amnesia when tested 48 h later. Animals receiving drug alone, in absence of reactivation, showed perfect retention. It is concluded that NMDARs support a consolidation process taking place after memory reactivation. (Contains 2 figures.)

In 2 experiments, college students read a historical passage on aspects of human intelligence. Students were randomly assigned to 2 different instructional conditions to process the passage, mnemonic and free study. Mnemonic participants remembered more names and contributions than did free-study participants. Findings illustrate that mnemonic techniques are useful in improving students' memory for and application of central textual information. (Contains 33 references, 2 tables, and 1 figure.) (GCP)

Twenty-three elementary and middle school students with learning disabilities were taught 14 difficult-to-memorize multiplication facts with a combination of mnemonic and traditional instruction. Results indicated that mnemonic training enhanced learning and these benefits were retained over time. (Author/DB)