Examination of middle-school students' independent use of a complex mnemonic system

The purpose of the present 2-experiment study was to determine whether a recently developed mnemonic numeric strategy could be used more independently by middle school students. In the context of associating various 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century inventions with their dates, the authors found that students could successfully implement the strategy in a group-instructional context (as opposed to the one-on-one individual administrations of earlier investigations). The students were not, however, able to take the basic components of the strategy and effectively apply them without complete mnemonic pictorial support. That is, students did not create their own memory-enhancing visual images in the absence of instructor-provided interactive line drawings. The results are consistent with those of previous research documenting that less sophisticated learners (including middle school students) are unable to apply complex mnemonic strategies independently unless they are provided with sufficient auxiliary support to reduce information-processing demands.