Elaborations of Introductory Psychology Terms: Effects on Test Performance and Subjective Ratings

Recentarticles in Teaching of Psychology have endorsed the classroom use of various mnemonic techniques. Yet a degree of mnemonophobia (i.e. , fear of using rnnemonics) may persist in the minds of some ToP readers due to various lingering misconceptions. In this regard, we conducted 3 practical experiments with college students using themnemonic keyword method to learn a setof psychologĩ cal terms (namely, phobias, for which we provide a sznnpie set, along with their mnemonic representations). We examined students' immediate and delayed recall, inference~demanding matching and categorization tests, and backward recall (recall of terms from definitions). On allmeasures, mnemonic students statistically outperformed control students. These findings provide further support for the use of classroom~based mnemonic techniques.Undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology courses often face an overwhelming amount of new terminology. Acquiring this terminology for an upcoming examination, and then retaining it for the longer term, may prove daunting for neophyte college students. In this regard, the mnemonic keyword method (e.g., Atkinson, 1975;Atkinson & Raugh, 1975) can be a useful technique. Although Atkinson and Raugh (1975) originally studied the keyword method in a foreign vocabulary learning context, others have applied this versatile strategy to the acquisition of both native vocabulary and unfamiliar terminology (e.g., see Levin, 1993;Pressley, Levin, & Delaney, 1982, for reviews). The keyword method works by recoding the unfamiliar word as a more familiar and acoustically similar keyword and then relating the keyword and word meaning 176 by way of an interactive visual image (Levin, 1983). Bower's (1970) componential analysis and Paivio's familiar dual-coding hypothesis (e.g., Clark & Paivio, 1987;Paivio, 1971Paivio, , 1986 provide theoretical explanations of these learning benefits.Carney and Levin (1998a) applied the keyword method to nervous system terminology typically presented in introductory psychology courses. We cornpared control students using a repetition strategy with students using two versions of the keyword method.Consider the term medulla, the part of the brain associated with control of heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. Students in the repetition condition simply repeated the term and its association over and over to themselves. In one version of the keyword method, we provided students with a keyword for each term (e.g., medalfor medulla), and then asked them to generate an image relating the keyword to the term's meaning. In the second keyword version, we provided students with a description of an appropriate image: "Imagine the winner of a race. Heart pounding and breathing heavily, a medal is hung round the winner's neck." Participants studied 18 terms at 20-sec intervals. Following a 2~min filler task, students completed a matching test over the 18 terms and their definitions. The study yielded statistically significant mnemonic advantages. Carney and Levin recommended that ...

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conquering Mnemonophobia, with Help from Three Practical Measures of Memory and Application

Carney¹,

Levin²

2008

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conquering Mnemonophobia, With Help From Three Practical Measures of Memory and Application

Carney

Levin

2008

Recent articles in Teaching of Psychology have endorsed the classroom use of various mnemonic techniques. Yet a degree of mnemonophobia (i.e., fear of using mnemonics) may persist in the minds of some ToP readers due to various lingering misconceptions. In this regard, we conducted 3 practical experiments with college students using the mnemonic keyword method to learn a set of psychological terms (namely, phobias, for which we provide a sample set, along with their mnemonic representations). We examined students' immediate and delayed recall, inference-demanding matching and categorization tests, and backward recall (recall of terms from definitions). On all measures, mnemonic students statistically outperformed control students. These findings provide further support for the use of classroom-based mnemonic techniques.Undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology courses often face an overwhelming amount of new terminology. Acquiring this terminology for an upcoming examination, and then retaining it for the longer term, may prove daunting for neophyte college students. In this regard, the mnemonic keyword method (e.g., Atkinson, 1975;Atkinson & Raugh, 1975) can be a useful technique. Although Atkinson and Raugh (1975) originally studied the keyword method in a foreign vocabulary learning context, others have applied this versatile strategy to the acquisition of both native vocabulary and unfamiliar terminology (e.g., see Levin, 1993;Pressley, Levin, & Delaney, 1982, for reviews). The keyword method works by recoding the unfamiliar word as a more familiar and acoustically similar keyword and then relating the keyword and word meaning by way of an interactive visual image (Levin, 1983). Bower's (1970) componential analysis and Paivio's familiar dual-coding hypothesis (e.g., Clark & Paivio, 1987;Paivio, 1971Paivio, , 1986 provide theoretical explanations of these learning benefits.Carney and Levin (1998a) applied the keyword method to nervous system terminology typically presented in introductory psychology courses. We compared control students using a repetition strategy with students using two versions of the keyword method. Consider the term medulla, the part of the brain associated with control of heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure. Students in the repetition condition simply repeated the term and its association over and over to themselves. In one version of the keyword method, we provided students with a keyword for each term (e.g., medal for medulla), and then asked them to generate an image relating the keyword to the term's meaning. In the second keyword version, we provided students with a description of an appropriate image: "Imagine the winner of a race. Heart pounding and breathing heavily, a medal is hung round the winner's neck." Participants studied 18 terms at 20-sec intervals. Following a 2-min filler task, students completed a matching test over the 18 terms and their definitions. The study yielded statistically significant mnemonic advantages. Carney and Levin recommended that ins...

“…Further, if Balch's (2005) finding of equal memory benefit for instructor-provided keyword mnemonics and examples was extended to self-created materials, then the generation effect should be equivalent for both types of study techniques.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Their results, which built on those of Levin (1998, 2008), uniformly and strongly supported the advantages of the keyword mnemonic in a variety of time delays and recall contexts. Balch (2005) took a slightly different approach to investigating the keyword mnemonic, by having his introduction to psychology students encode various psychology terms (including brain terms) using examples, keyword mnemonics, paraphrases, or twice-repeated definitions (in the control condition), all provided by the instructor. Results showed that performance on definitional and applied multiple choice questions were equivalent for the example and keyword conditions and that these levels were significantly higher than the control condition.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Building on the research of Balch (2005), Bloom and Lamkin (2006), and Richmond et al (2011) Levin's (1998Levin's ( , 2008 and Richmond et al's materials and methods with regard to keyword learning for neurophysiological terms, and adds a generation component (Bloom & Lamkin, 2006) to allow me to address the central research question: Will students' memory for neurophysiological terminology be helped more by instructor-provided mnemonics and examples, by creating their own mnemonics, or by creating their own examples?…”

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confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Learning the Brain in Introductory Psychology

McCabe

2015

The goal of this research was to determine whether there is a generation effect for learner-created keyword mnemonics and real-life examples, compared to instructor-provided materials, when learning neurophysiological terms and definitions in introductory psychology. Students participated in an individual (Study 1) or small-group (Study 2) in-class activity during which they used three strategies: generate new keyword mnemonics, generate new real-life examples, and read instructor-provided mnemonics and examples. Immediate and delayed quiz results showed that the keyword-mnemonic-generation strategy was superior for definitional quiz performance across both time points. Questionnaire data indicated that students overall felt ''generating'' was more helpful than ''reading,'' generating mnemonics was more helpful than generating examples, and a substantial portion would plan to use the mnemonic-generation strategy in the future. Results are discussed in the context of mnemonics training, specifically mnemonics-creation assignments, in the introductory-level psychology classroom and beyond.