Novices, Apprentices, and Mnemonists: Acquiring Expertise with the Phonetic Mnemonic

Abstract

Three kinds of participants can be identified in research with the phonetic mnemonic—novices, apprentices, and mnemonists, and most research has involved novices. Two experiments investigated whether ordinary college students using the phonetic mnemonic could duplicate two feats of Luria's memorist identified as S: memorizing a 20‐digit matrix in 40 seconds, and memorizing a 50‐digit matrix in 3 minutes. Experiment 1 was a large‐n study in which novices were provided with phonetic keywords along with the matrices; nearly half of the students successfully memorized each matrix with no errors in recall. Experiment 2 was a small‐n study in which apprentices were not given the keywords with the matrices; three of the four students also successfully memorized each matrix with perfect recall. The results suggest that ordinary college students are capable of acquiring a level of skilled memory that rivals the abilities that appear to be innate or idiosyncratic in memorists and mnemonists, and that additional research with mnemonic apprentices might be beneficial. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Non-pharmacological cognitive enhancement

“…While their immediate benefits for easy-to-learn material seem to be in the small to medium effect size range, the effectiveness of mnemonics strikingly grows with task difficulty or retention time and can reach effect sizes in terms of Cohen's d of larger than 3 or 4 (e.g. Higbee, 1997;Karpicke and Roediger, 2008). Of note, the benefits of mnemonics in population groups with particular cognitive training needs as e.g.…”

“…Both the method of loci and the phonetic system have been shown to be very effective and even increase their efficacy over time, i.e. at delayed recall after several days compared to immediate recall (Bower, 1970;Roediger, 1980;Bellezza et al, 1992;Hill et al, 1997;Higbee, 1997;Wang and Thomas, 2000). A third mnemonic that has to be shown effective is the keyword method, designed specifically to enhance the acquisition of foreign vocabulary (Raugh and Atkinson, 1975), but also helps to learn scientific terminology (Rosenheck et al, 1989;Brigham and Brigham, 1998;Balch, 2005;Carney and Levin, 1998).…”

Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance: an account based on the expert performance framework

“…When larger groups of participants have been taught mnemonic memory strategies (related to those used by the trained students), the memory performance of these participants is dramatically improved with extended practice (Higbee, 1997). Furthermore, in a recent brain scanning study Maguire et al (2003) found no anatomical differences in the brains of some of the world's top competitive memorizers and a matched control group.…”

Cognitive Enhancement in Humans

“…Parallel to their success in memory artistry and memory sports, several mnemonics have been shown to strongly enhance memory capacity in scientific studies (Bellezza, 1981;Worthen and Hunt, 2011a,b). Both the method of loci and the phonetic system have been shown to be very effective and even increase their efficacy over time, that is, at delayed recall after several days compared to immediate recall (Bower, 1970;Roediger, 1980;Bellezza et al, 1992;Hill et al, 1997;Higbee, 1997;Wang and Thomas, 2000). It uses well-established memories of spatial routes: during encoding, to-be-remembered information items are visualized at salient points along such a route, which in turn is mentally retraced during retrieval.…”