Assessment data from the United States and international reports of student achievement indicate that upper elementary students are failing to meet basic levels of proficiency in fractions and writing, and that this is particularly prevalent with students with or at-risk for learning disabilities in mathematics. Proficiency with fractions has been…

Contemporary embodiment theory's indexical hypothesis predicts that engaging in text-relevant activity while listening to a story will: (1) enhance memory for enacted story content; and, (2) result in relatively greater memory enhancement for enacted atypical events than for typical ones ([Glenberg and Robertson, 1999] and [Glenberg and Robertson,…

Students enrolled in music appreciation and music history courses may find it difficult to remember composers' names and the titles of their compositions--particularly when retrieval is prompted by corresponding classical music themes. We sought to develop and validate a mnemonic approach in which musical themes were first recoded as more concrete…

Studied whether a recently developed mnemonic strategy could be used more independently by middle school students. Results of 2 studies involving 48 and 70 seventh graders show that students did not create their own memory-enhancing visual images in the absence of instructor-provided interactive drawings. Results support the view that less…

This article focuses on the early research domains investigated by Michael Pressley, along with the integrations and initiatives that were inspired by them. These research domains include verbal and imagery elaboration memory strategies, and developmental aspects of them; interrogative elaboration; pictorial strategies for language and literacy…

Reviews educationally relevant mnemonic strategy research, awarding "grades" to various mnemonic strategies and curricular applications. Mnemonic materials designed for factual content and mnemonic applications for educationally handicapped students are awarded A's, whereas teachers, mnemonic strategy critics, and mnemonic strategy…

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…

Elaboration in learning involves meaning-enhancing additions, constructions, or generations that improve one's memory for what is being learned. Recent examples of applications of elaboration theory include efforts in the areas of meta-cognitive components of learning strategies, mnemonics, and text-processing strategies. (TJH)

Research has indicated that the keyword method of vocabulary learning facilitates students' performance on comprehension-demanding tasks as well as test of definition recall. When conditions and undergraduate subjects within conditions were equated with respect to their initial levels of definition recall, the comprehension advantage of keyword…

Eighth-grade students were given short prose passages that described the distinguishing attributes of fictitious towns. Illustrations were devised to represent the attributes, either separately, thematically, or thematically in conjunction with the mnemonic keyword method. Keyword illustrations proved to be highly effective facilitators of…

Examines mnemonic transfer in the form of knowledge generalization in the context of an artwork-learning task. Results reveal that mnemonic instruction produced memory benefits on a direct test, and that on a transfer task, mnemonic students who were directed to focus on the general style of the artist outperformed students who focused on details…

Fourth-grade students learned a list of relatively complex English vocabulary words in two experiments. In both experiments, a keyword contextual method proved effective for enhancing children's acquisition of new vocabulary words. (Author/BW)

Seventh- and eighth-grade students were presented fictitious biographies to remember. Keyword students used a prose-learning adaptation of the mnemonic keyword method. It resulted in higher levels of recall than did control instructions. In a subsequent experiment, the basic findings were replicated on immediate and delayed recognition tests.…

College undergraduates (N=136) studied a hierarchical plant classification system using a figural taxonomy or a pictorial mnemonomy. Mnemonomy students outperformed taxonomy students on (1) immediate and five-day delayed measures of classification system construction and use; and (2) a test that required solving analogies involving plant terms.…

One hundred sixth-graders studied a list of new vocabulary items according to either a semantic-context or mnemonic learning strategy, combined with either an individual or pair format for studying and testing. Results indicate that when a scripted learning pair-learning/testing format was incorporated, vocabulary learning benefits were observed…