Mnemonics beat repetition for remembering word lists

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-02-14 11:01

International

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Need to remember a long list of words? International researchers say adults are likely to use and adjust mnemonics to help, and this strategy beats simply repeating the words over and over. A mnemonic is a pattern of words, letters, or ideas that helps us remember something unrelated. For instance, 'My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles' can help us remember the order of the planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The team says that their findings confirm previous research in this area.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

STRATEGY USE AND ITS EVOLVEMENT IN WORD LIST LEARNING: A REPLICATION STUDY

How to handle a familiar yet demanding memory task, like learning a long list of words? The present replication study confirms earlier results by showing that most adults spontaneously generate some mnemonic that they may adjust especially early on. Adults reporting more advanced mnemonic like creating word groupings or associations in mind, had superior word recall compared to those who just repeated the words or reported no strategy. Strategy generation and adjustment especially at the start of a demanding memory task suggests that memory test performance is a dynamic process that involves learning of skills relevant to the task.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Åbo Akademi University, Finland

Funder: This work was financially supported by the Academy of Finland (grant 323251 to M.L.; grants 325981, 328954, and 353518 to J.S.).

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