Effectiveness
Academic study of the use of mnemonics has shown their effectiveness. In one such experiment, subjects of different ages who applied mnemonic techniques to learn novel vocabulary outperformed control groups that applied contextual learning and free-learning styles.
Mnemonics vary in effectiveness for several groups ranging from young children to the elderly. Mnemonic learning strategies require time and resources by educators to develop creative and effective devices. The most simple and creative mnemonic devices usually are the most effective for teaching. In the classroom, mnemonic devices must be used at the appropriate time in the instructional sequence to achieve it's maximum effectiveness. Mnemonics were seen to be more effective for groups of people who struggled with or had weak long term memory like the elderly community. Five years after participation in a mnemonic training study, a research team followed-up 112 community-dwelling older adults, 60 years of age and over. Delayed recall of a word list was assessed prior to, and immediately following mnemonic training, and at the 5-year follow-up. Overall, there was no significant difference between word recall prior to training and that exhibited at follow-up. This greatly contrasts with a study where the results showed from surveys done by medical students that approximately only 20% frequently used mnemonic acronyms. . It is also worthy to note that although the majority of a certain age group can benefit fro the use of mnemonics, not everyone can learn best using them.
Studies (notably "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two") have suggested that the short-term memory of adult humans can hold only a limited number of items; grouping items into larger chunks such as in a mnemonic might be part of what permits the brain to hold a larger total amount of information in short-term memory, which in turn can aid the creation of long-term memories.
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