American Educational Research Journal
Winter 1987, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 505-519
Learning-Disabled Students5 Memory for
Expository Prose: Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic
Pictures
Margo A. Mastropieri and Thomas E. Scruggs
Purdue University
and
Joel R. Levin
University of Wisconsin
Sixty-seven learning-disabled (LD) students read passages that offered
reasons for dinosaur extinction. The reasons were presented in decreasing
order of their plausibility. Students were randomly assigned to one ofthree
experimental conditions: In the nonmnemonic-picture condition, pictorial
representations of each reason accompanied the text; in the mnemonicpicture condition, the same pictorial representations included direct mnemonic links to the reasons' plausibility numbers; and in the no-picture
control condition, no illustrations were provided. Consistent with recent
theoretical analyses of the different prose-learning functions ofpictures, in
comparison to the no-picture control condition (a) both nonmnemonic and
mnemonic pictures facilitated students 'free recall ofthe extinction reasons;
(b) only mnemonic pictures facilitated students' recall of the reasons in
conjunction with their plausibility numbers; and (c) neither mnemonic nor
nonmnemonic pictures facilitated students' recall ofadditional, unpictured,
factual information from the passage. No performance differences among
conditions were found on a near-transfer task that required reason-plausibility judgments. The results are discussed in the general context of
illustrations as applied to LD students' learning from text.
A variety of instructional strategies have been proposed to assist learningdisabled (LD) students store and retrieve verbally presented information
(see, for example, Ceci, 1986, in press, and Swanson, in press). Moreover,
We are grateful to Dr. Hal McGrady and the staff and students of the Mesa
(Arizona) Public Schools for their cooperation. The third author's contribution was
facilitated by a Romnes Faculty Fellowship awarded by the Graduate School of the
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
505
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
strategy research that was initially concerned with facilitating handicapped
learners' memory for lists of discrete verbal items has recently been
extended to such students' comprehension and recall of connected discourse. For example, students with prose-comprehension difficulties have
been taught to employ strategies for monitoring and assessing their ongoing
reading comprehension, for identifying important propositions in the text,
for improving their understanding of textual information, and for organizing that information into more coherent units (e.g., Bos & Filip, 1984;
Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981; Graves, in press; Palincsar & Brown,
1984; Wong, 1985; Worden, 1983).
At the same time, strategies based on the principles of effective mnemonic
techniques have consistently produced powerful effects on students' memory for factual information. Such strategies are characterized by the transformation of to-be-learned materials into more meaningful and memorable
representations, often as pictures or visual images (Bellezza, 1981; Levin,
1983). Pictorial mnemonic facilitation has been documented for both
nondisabled and disabled students learning either unconnected or textembedded facts (see, e.g., Levin, 1985, and Mastropieri, Scruggs, & Levin,
1987). The impetus for the present investigation was provided by a recent
study in which LD middle-school students, who independently read a
science lesson about the attributes of several North American minerals,
profited greatly from the inclusion of mnemonic illustrations (Scruggs,
Mastropieri, McLoone, Levin, & Morrison, 1987). Our purpose here is to
distinguish between illustrations that are truly "mnemonic" and those that
are not and, in particular, to analyze the properties of both types of
illustration, along with their respective contributions to LD students'
learning from expository text.
In the present study, LD adolescents were asked to read a passage that
provided, in decreasing order of plausibility, nine proposed explanations
for the extinction of dinosaurs (see Veit, Scruggs, & Mastropieri, 1986).
One third of the students independently read the passage, whereas the
remaining two thirds of the students read the passage in the company of
content-relevant illustrations. Two different kinds of illustrations were
developed which differed from one another in a single, but theoretically
important, way. Nonmnemonic illustrations were simple pictorial representations of each of the nine provided verbal explanations. For example, the
third most plausible reason given for dinosaur extinction was that "dinosaurs died out because of an exploding star." In the nonmnemonic-picture
condition, this verbal explanation was accompanied by the cartoonlike
representation of a dinosaur and an exploding star (see Figure 1). In
contrast, mnemonic illustrations consisted of pictures that provided a direct
link between each reason and its plausibility number. The number link
was afforded by the mnemonic "pegword method" (see Bellezza, 1981),
which capitalizes on the childhood rhyme, "One is a bun, two is a shoe,
506
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
THREE
^HfE^
EXPLODING STAR
I
FIGURE 1. Example of a nonmnemonic illustration
three is a /r^, . . . , ten is a Ae«.w For the above example, students in the
mnemonic-picture condition were shown the illustration in Figure 2, where
it can be noted that the "exploding star" information is linked directly to
the reason-plausibility number three by incorporating a tree into the Figure
1 illustration.
Based on previous theorizing about (Levin, 1981)—and subsequent
empirical validation of (Levin, Anglin, & Carney, 1987)—the different
"functions" served by different types of prose-learning pictures, it was
posited that the present mnemonic and nonmnemonic illustrations would
produce different patterns of prose-learning facilitation. In particular,
concerning the total number of correctly recalled reasons without regard
to their plausibility numbers, students in both picture conditions should be
able to capitalize on the powerful concreteness/memorableness properties
of illustrations to retrieve the answers (e.g., Paivio, 1971). Thus, relative to
no-picture control subjects, students in both the mnemonic- and nonmnemonic-picture conditions should remember more of the previously described reasons. Additionally, because students in the mnemonic-picture
condition were provided a direct "pegword" link with each reason's plausibility number, they should better remember the reasons in connection
with their plausibility numbers. Nonmnemonic-picture subjects, not being
provided with the number links in their illustrations, should not exhibit a
similar advantage (see, for example, Levin, McCormick, Miller, Berry, &
Pressley, 1982). Finally, based on a good deal of previous research evidence
507
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
EXPLODING STAR
THREE (TREE)
^
' '/
— m^
W«l
FIGURE 2. Example of a mnemonic illustration
(Levie & Lentz, 1982; Levin et al., 1987), it was expected that additional,
reason-elaborating information that appeared in the text but not in the
illustrations (e.g., that the exploding star sent rays to earth) would not be
remembered better by subjects in either picture condition, relative to nopicture controls.
Method
Subjects and Design
Subjects were 67 LD students attending resource rooms in junior high
schools in a western metropolitan area. The sample included 37 (55%)
male and 30 (45%) female students, of whom 55 (82%) were Anglo, 4
(6%) were black, 6 (9%) were Hispanic, and 2 (3%) were native American.
Twenty-one (31%) were seventh graders, 21 (31%) were eighth graders,
and 25 (37%) were ninth graders. The mean Wechsler Intelligence Scale
for Children—Revised (WISC-R) IQ was 96.0 (SD = 8.9) for 55 of the
students. The remaining 12 students were reported by school psychologists
as being in the "average" (n = 9), "low average" (n = 2), or "high average"
(n = 1) range. The mean grade-equivalent scores for all students, as assessed
by the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery, were 5.1 (SD = 1.9)
and 5.3 (SD = 1.4) for reading and mathematics, respectively. Students
were currently spending an average of about 1.8 hours per day (SD = .9)
in special education settings.
508
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
The students were classified as having learning disabilities according to
the federal law, PL 94-142, and local school district criteria that contained
the following elements: All students were initially referred for special
education services by their regular education teachers as a result of failure
in those classes. After referral, all students were evaluated by a multidisciplinary team to determine whether students exhibited a pattern of learning
disabilities characteristics. Students' abilities were evaluated using standardized tests, informal test instruments, samples of classroom work, and
observations of classroom behavior. Specific abilities assessed included
some of the following: (a) academic performance; (b) intelligence; (c) study
and work habits; (d) organizational skills; (e) short- and long-term memory;
and (0 orientation in time and space. Additionally, learning disabilities
were operationally defined as students' possessing: (a) average intellectual
abilities on individually administered intelligence tests and (b) significant
discrepancies between IQ and academic performance, as defined by IQ/
achievement discrepancies of more than 1 standard deviation. Finally, the
multidisciplinary team convened, developed a diagnostic statement based
on student performance in each of the just-mentioned areas, and made a
formal learning-disabilities classification for all students included in this
sample.
As was noted in the introduction, there were three experimental conditions: no-picture control, where students independently read a "dinosaur"
passage; nonmnemonic picture, where content-relevant representational
illustrations were embedded in the passage; and mnemonic picture, where
mnemonic pegwords were incorporated into the passage-embedded illustrations. The students were stratified by grade level and randomly assigned
in approximately equal numbers to the three experimental conditions.
Materials
The materials consisted of a study booklet, which contained a passage
based on the Veit et al. (1986) list of reasons given for dinosaur extinction.
The reasons were presented in decreasing order of their plausibility, with
each reason accompanied by an additional related fact. For example,
Reason Number 7 was that the dinosaurs were poisoned, and the additional
information was that newly appearing flowering plants contained that
poison. Both the reasons and the additional information were underlined
in the text, and students were aware that the underlined portions contained
the most important passage information to be remembered. The first page
of the study booklet was a title page, followed by a page that presented
background information on dinosaur extinction (including a simple definition of the term "extinct"). The actual passage was approximately 900
words in length and was assessed by Fry's "readability" formula to be
written at about a fifth grade level.
In addition to the study booklet, which differed by experimental condi509
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
tion, two common criterion tests were constructed. The first test (reason
recall) consisted of nine randomly ordered two-part questions: (a) What
was reason number __? and (b) What else do you remember about reason
number _? The second test (plausibility identification) consisted of a 9 x
5 matrix, whose rows consisted of the nine (randomly ordered) reasons
and whose columns consisted of five ordered descriptors ranging from
"most likely" to "least likely." Each descriptor had previously been mentioned once in the study booklets in the company of the associated reason's
plausibility number (e.g., "Reason Number 7: Dinosaurs died out because
they were poisoned." This reason is also "not very likely" and has been
designated as Number 7.). Students were required to fill in the matrix by
placing an X in the appropriate plausibility-descriptor column for each
reason.
Materials specific to each experimental condition are now described.
Mnemonic-picture condition. The third and fourth pages of the study
booklet provided pegwords for the numbers 1 to 10, along with a dinosaurunrelated example and illustration on which to practice ("10 = hen" for
remembering the 10th event of a track-and-field decathlon). This was
followed by a pair of sample questions related to the just-presented "reason"
and "additional" information. The remaining pages of the booklet contained the dinosaur passage, accompanying pegword illustrations (adapted
from Veit et al., 1986), and descriptions of the illustrations. Only the basic
reasons (e.g., exploding star, poison)—and not the additional information
(e.g., rays, flowering plants)—appeared in the illustrations, along with the
pegwords (tree for "3," heaven for "7"). The final page of the booklet
contained a brief prompt reminding students to think back to the pegword
illustration when attempting to retrieve the asked-for information.
Nonmnemonic-picture condition. The third page of the study booklet
provided students with general motivational suggestions for learning. These
were followed by the decathlon example (which included a representational
illustration) and practice test. The remaining pages contained the same
text that was in the mnemonic-picture condition, with the exception that
all pegword references were omitted. The provided illustrations also paralleled those in the mnemonic-picture condition, except that the pegword
was not included (cf. Figures 1 and 2). As in the mnemonic-picture
condition, the last page of the study booklet contained a think-back-tothe-picture retrieval prompt.
No-picture control condition. The materials (instructions, example, practice test, passage, and retrieval prompt) in this condition corresponded to
those in the nonmnemonic-picture condition, with the notable exception
that no illustrations were provided for the students.
Procedure
Treatments were individually administered to students by one of two
510
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
experimenters, in a quiet room adjacent to the classroom. The experimenter read the introduction, example, and practice test while students followed
along in their booklet. All students were given feedback on their practicetest performance. Experimenter-directed instructions, practice, and feedback were incorporated so that the students would clearly understand the
specific processing and retrieval steps to be followed with the reading
strategy that they were about to employ. Students were then informed that
they were to read the remainder of the booklet silently on their own, but
that if they needed any decoding assistance the experimenter would help
them.1 Following a 14-minute study period, a 1-minute filler interval was
provided, during which the student's name, grade level, and teacher's name
were written on the test sheet. Then the two criterion tests were administered, first the reason-recall task and then the plausibility-identification
task. Students were permitted to proceed through each task at their own
pace.
Results
Two independent judges, "blind" with respect to students' experimental
conditions, scored the data with 100% agreement. For each of the dependent measures analyzed, the three experimental conditions were compared
with one another via the Spj0tvoll-Stoline unequal-TV generalization of
Tukey's multiple comparison procedure based on a familywise a of .05
(Kirk, 1982, pp. 118-119). According to this procedure, the critical test
statistic required for each comparison's significance may be expressed as
/(64) = 2.41.
Reason-Recall Test
Three measures were derived from this test: (I) free recall, or how many
reasons were remembered regardless of the correctness of their plausibility
numbers; (2) numbered recall, or how many reasons were remembered
along with their correct plausibility numbers; and (3) additional recall, or
how many additional reason-elaborating facts were remembered.2 As mentioned previously, it was predicted that relative to the no-picture control
condition (a) both mnemonic and nonmnemonic illustrations would similarly facilitate students' free recall, in that the same concrete reason
referents are afforded by each type of illustration; (b) only mnemonic
1
It should be noted that this type of "free-study" procedure has been employed
in several of our previous investigations; this helps to dismiss one of the time/
pacing concerns that Hall and Fuson (1986) have expressed about mnemonicstrategy research in general.
2
The incidental-recall data were scored both with regard to their associated
reason numbers (numbered incidental recall) and apart from them (free incidental
recall). The pattern of statistical results was the same in both cases, and so only the
free incidental-recall scores (which are uniformly higher) are reported here.
511
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
TABLE 1
Mean percentage correct, by experimental condition
Condition
Measure
Free recall3
Numbered recall5
Additional recall0
Plausibility identification41
Mnemonic
picture
84.3
80.8
16.7
72.2
Nonmnemonic
picture
82.1
54.6
22.7
69.9
No-picture
control
67.2
39.9
15.2
64.6
*MSE (64) = 242.6.
b
MSE (64) = 732.1.
C
MSE (64) = 438.9.
d
MSE (64) = 396.9; "Chance" = 51.4.
illustrations would facilitate students' numbered recall, in that such illustrations incorporate direct retrieval cues (pegwords) for the reasons, cues
that are lacking in the nonmnemonic-picture condition; and (c) neither
mnemonic nor nonmnemonic illustrations would facilitate students' additional recall, in that the additional facts were not included in either type
of illustration. The data relevant to these predictions may be found in the
first three rows of Table 1.
All three predictions were statistically supported. For the free-recall
measure, the mean performance of students in both picture conditions
surpassed that of students in the no-picture control condition, /s = 3.66
and 3.18 for mnemonic and nonmnemonic, respectively, with no significant difference between the two picture variations, / < 1. For the numberedrecall measure, mnemonic-picture subjects were statistically superior to
both nonmnemonic-picture and no-picture subjects, /s = 3.21 and 5.01,
respectively, with the latter two conditions not differing significantly, / =
1.80, p > .05. Finally, mean additional recall was quite low and statistically
equivalent in all three experimental conditions, all /s < 1.20, ps > .20.
Plausibility-Identification Test
On this test, students were required to check off each reason's plausibility
on a 5-point scale consisting of the ordered descriptors "most likely,"
"quite likely," "less likely," "not very likely," and "least likely." The data
were scored with respect to students' accuracy in identifying the appropriate
descriptors, as defined in terms of absolute deviations from the correct
answers. Thus, for the "exploding star" reason (Number 3), whose plausibility was described in the passage as "quite likely," "most likely" and "less
likely" both represent a deviation of 1, "not very likely" represents a
deviation of 2, and "least likely," a 3. Summed across all nine reasons, the
maximum possible deviation score was 28; thus, subtracting each subject's
512
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
total deviation score from 28 and then multiplying by 100/28 yields an
accuracy percentage.
Differing predictions can be offered for between-conditions differences
on this accuracy measure. On the one hand, to the extent that the students
can spontaneously translate smaller reason numbers into "likely" descriptors and larger reason numbers into "unlikely" descriptors, then the same
pattern of results would be expected here as on the numbered-recall task.
That is, mnemonic-picture subjects should exhibit an advantage. On the
other hand, if number-to-descriptor translations are not spontaneously
made—or if they are made unsuccessfully—no differences among conditions would be expected, inasmuch as the descriptor information was not
directly represented in either the mnemonic or nonmnemonic illustrations.
The relevant data are presented in the fourth row of Table 4, where it
should be noted that "chance" performance on the accuracy measure is
equal to 51.4%. No significant between-conditions differences were detected, all /s < 1.28, ps > .20. Thus, even though mnemonic-picture
subjects had a higher level of numbered-reason information at their disposal in comparison to subjects in the other two conditions (see Row 2 of
Table 1), evidently that was not enough to facilitate spontaneous transfer
of such information to the plausibility-identification task (Row 4 of Table
1). We will return to this issue in the following section.
Discussion
The results of this study indicate that different types of illustrations serve
different prose-learning functions with LD students, just as they do with
nondisabled students (Levin, 1981). In particular, mnemonic illustrations—here, illustrations that included both the to-be-remembered factual
information and a mnemonic pegword for enabling retrieval of that
information in a specified order—facilitated both students' free recall of
the information and their ordered recall of it. In contrast, nonmnemonic
illustrations, which captured the factual content but not its specified order,
facilitated only students' free recall.
Selective picture facilitation of this kind is not just an interesting empirical result but is also important from a theoretical standpoint. First,
consistent with theorizing about picture functions, it demonstrates that not
all types of prose-learning pictures are equally beneficial. Pictures encompassing information that is directly relevant to the criterion task are
facilitative, whereas pictures encompassing information that is irrelevant
to the criterion task are not. Levin (1986) has discussed this issue in the
context of Morris, Bransford, and Franks's (1977) more general principle
of transfer-appropriate processing, which holds that "assumptions about
the value of particular types of acquisition activities must be defined
relative to the type of activities to be performed at the time of test" (p.
531). The principle is especially useful when attempting to identify the
513
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
specific cognitive processes that various instructional strategies and materials are presumed to activate in students.
Our cognitively based transfer-appropriate-processing view of selective
picture facilitation may be contrasted with a noncognitively based account
of the role played by pictures in text. It might be argued, for example, that
the primary contribution of pictures to students' enhanced learning from
text comes from pictures' motivating or attention-getting properties (see
Levin & Pressley, 1985). That is, learning benefits result not from the
pictures' specific content per se but from their tendency to increase
students' general level of motivation or interest. In the present study, two
different types of pictures were provided. If pictures function as general
motivators, then facilitated performance on all learning-related outcome
measures might have been expected from both types of pictures. Such was
not the case, however: As has already been noted, the facilitation was
observed on only those measures for which there was a direct correspondence between the cognitive processes evoked by the pictures and the
cognitive outcome being assessed. Specifically, (a) content-related pictures
with embedded number links (mnemonic pictures) facilitated students'
recall of both ordered and unordered pictured content (numbered recall
and free recall, respectively); (b) content-related pictures without any
number links (nonmnemonic pictures) facilitated students' recall of unordered, but not ordered, picture content; and (c) neither type of picture
facilitated students' recall of information that was not present in the
illustration (additional recall). This differentiated pattern of picture-related
findings with LD students accords well with previous comparisons of
mnemonic and nonmnemonic pictures in nondisabled populations (e.g.,
Levin et al., 1982; Levin, Shriberg, & Berry, 1983) and adds to the nowsubstantial evidence against both pictures' global benefits and their noncognitive bases.
At the other extreme, some (e.g., Harber, 1983) have argued that
illustrations may be detrimental to reading-disabled students' text processing and memory (see Scruggs, Mastropieri, & Levin, in press). Although
this claim may be a valid one when either (a) the pictures are not well
matched to the text or (b) the students do not possess adequate decoding
and word-recognition skills (so that the pictures cannot complement or
augment what is being read), it is not valid otherwise. The empirical
literature clearly supports the assertion that both good and poor reading
comprehenders profit from content-relevant pictures in prose (Levie &
Lentz, 1982; Levin et al., 1987). Indeed, illustrations facilitate recall of
orally presented prose even for students with inadequate basic reading
skills.
Consideration should also be given to our finding of no conditionsrelated differences on the plausibility-identification task. In a recent study,
Scruggs et al. (1987) found that mnemonically instructed LD subjects were
514
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
able to transfer information they had acquired about the specific attributes
of minerals (specific hardness levels, colors, and uses) to the identification
of attribute dichotomies (hardness vs. softness, pale vs. dark color, and
home vs. industrial use). That is, mnemonic subjects' superior performance
on a task measuring previously learned specific-attribute information was
maintained on a task for which appropriate dichotomous classifications
had to be "inferred." A similar transfer situation was provided for here,
namely one that required transfer of specific reason-number recalls to
ordered reason-plausibility identifications. Yet, in contrast to the Scruggs
et al. finding, no mnemonic facilitation was observed on the present
transfer task even though it was substantial on the initial numbered-recall
task.
A few different explanations for the lack of mnemonic transfer may be
considered. First is the observation that the plausibility-identification task
itself appeared to be quite difficult for students in all conditions—mean
performances ranged from only 13 percentage points above chance in the
no-picture control condition to 21 above chance in the mnemonic-picture
condition. Such "floor"-approaching performances may therefore have
reduced the opportunity to detect a positive transfer effect. It should be
noted as well that the correlations between subjects' numbered recall and
their plausibility-identification inaccuracy were relatively low, and statistically nonsignificant, in all three experimental conditions (rs = -.39,
-.26, and -.15 for the mnemonic picture, nonmnemonic picture, and nopicture control conditions, respectively, all ps > .05). Such correlations
suggest either that the two tasks had less in common than is believed or
that the low levels of performance on the plausibility-identification task
obscured the common processes involved.
A second explanation for the lack of mnemonic transfer is that, while
studying the passage, mnemonic subjects likely attended much more (or
even exclusively) to the specific reason numbers, whereas subjects in the
two other conditions divided their attention more equally across the entire
content. The truth of this explanation implies that mnemonic subjects
would have had to "infer" a reason's plausibility from its previously learned
number, while subjects in the other conditions attempted to "remember"
the plausibility from the text descriptions. Related to this explanation is
the general difficulty that students may have had in discriminating the
intended meaning differences among descriptors on the plausibility-identification task (e.g., "less likely" from "not very likely"). The net result
would be to reduce or eliminate the initial superiority that mnemonic
subjects demonstrated on the numbered-recall task.
Of course, an alternative account of the present finding is that mnemonically learned information is not easily transferred to a novel application
task. (Note, however, that relative to students in the two other conditions,
mnemonic subjects were certainly not at a disadvantage on the plausibility515
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
identification task—cf. Table 1.) It is also worth pointing out that the
plausibility-identification task reflects strictly the spontaneous, unprompted, transfer proclivities exhibited by the students. Whether or not
subjects' plausibility-identification performance in general, and that of
mnemonic-picture subjects in particular, would have been elevated by
explicit instructions concerning the correspondence between specific reason
numbers and the plausibility descriptors is not known. In other words,
questions about the degree to which mnemonically instructed LD students
can (rather than do) transfer their previously acquired "dinosaur" facts
remain unresolved by the present study. As suggested by Mastropieri and
Scruggs (1987), instructional procedures for facilitating transfer of learned
information may be different from those required for facilitating initial
acquisition of that information.
At the same time, the studies recently reported by Scruggs et al. (in
press) and by Veit et al. (1986) offer encouragement regarding the potential
of mnemonic instruction in LD populations. As was noted above, in the
former study mnemonically instructed LD students not only remembered
more specifically learned information, but they were also better able to
transfer that knowledge to a related classification task. And in the latter
study, LD students who received three different lessons (on consecutive
days) about dinosaurs learned each of those lessons better when they were
mnemonically instructed, with no evidence of a reduction in the magnitude
of the mnemonic subjects' advantage from one lesson to the next. In these
and in other studies with LD students, actual mnemonic materials (illustrations and verbal prompts) were provided for the students to use in
highly structured formats; the provided mnemonic materials have consistently proven to be highly effective in such studies (see Mastropieri, Scruggs,
& Levin, 1987).
What is most needed now is research directed toward the critical issues
of students' independent generation and use of mnemonic strategies (i.e.,
teaching students how to summon up mnemonic strategies for their own
use when the situation warrants). Clearly, instructional efforts that combine
both cognitive components (e.g., knowing about specific strategies and
how to deploy them) and metacognitive components (e.g., recognizing
when to deploy those strategies) are bound to produce the largest payoffs
in an "independent learning" context (see, e.g., Pressley, Borkowski, &
Schneider, in press). Students with learning disabilities constitute especially
appropriate targets for combined cognitive/metacognitive intervention
efforts of this kind.
A final comment relates to the educational utility of mnemonic learning
strategies in general. Though mnemonic strategies are certainly not a
universal prescription for facilitating all school-learning outcomes (Levin
& Pressley, 1985), it is time to acknowledge that such strategies can do
more than simply assisting students to acquire verbatim factual associa516
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
tions. Recent evidence suggests that mnemonic strategies can provide the
initial building blocks from which higher-level learning outcomes—such
as comprehension, application, and problem solving—can develop. For
example, Rosenheck, Finch, and Levin (1987) found that college students
who were provided with a mnemonic strategy for studying a plant taxonomy not only remembered more plant definitions and relationships than
did their nonmnemonic-strategy counterparts, but they were also better
able to apply that information in a creative problem-solving situation. In
short, mnemonically acquired factual information readily transferred from
its original context to a novel one. Transfer of declarative to procedural
knowledge is what educators have in mind when they refer to skills such
as "problem solving," "higher-order thinking," and the like; and based on
the available empirical evidence, it appears that mnemonic strategies can
be valuable facilitators of those skills.
References
Bellezza, F. S. (1981). Mnemonic devices: Classification, characteristics, and criteria. Review of Educational Research, 51, 247-275.
Bos, C. S., & Filip, D. (1982). Comprehension monitoring skills in learning disabled
and average students. Topics in Learning and Learning Disabilities, 2, 79-86.
Brown, A. L., Campione, J. C, & Day, J. D. (1981). Learning to learn: On training
students to learn from texts. Educational Researcher, 10(2), 14-21.
Ceci, S. J. (Ed.). (1986). Handbook of cognitive, social, and neuropsychological
aspects of learning disabilities (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Ceci, S. J. (Ed.), (in press). Handbook of cognitive, social, and neuropsychological
aspects of learning disabilities (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Graves, A. W. (in press). A study of the efficacy of direct instruction and metacomprehension training onfindingmain ideas by learning disabled children. Learning
Disabilities Research.
Hall, J. W., & Fuson, K. C. (1986). Presentation rates in experiments on mnemonics: A methodological note. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 233-234.
Harber, J. R. (1983). The effects of illustrations on the reading performance of
learning disabled and normal children. Learning Disability Quarterly, 6, 55-60.
Kirk, R. E. (1982). Experimental design (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Levie, W. H., & Lentz, R. (1982). Effects of text illustrations: A review of research.
Educational Communication and Technology Journal, 30, 195-232.
Levin, J. R. (1981). On functions of pictures in prose. In F. J. Pirozzolo & M. C.
Wittrock (Eds.), Neuropsychological and cognitive processes in reading (pp. 203228). New York: Academic Press.
Levin, J. R. (1983). Pictorial strategies for school learning: Practical illustrations.
In M. Pressley & J. R. Levin (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: Educational
applications (pp. 213-237). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Levin, J. R. (1985). Educational applications of mnemonic pictures: Possibilities
beyond your wildest imagination. In A. A. Sheikh & K. S. Sheikh (Eds.), Imagery
in education: Imagery in the educational process (pp. 63-87). Farmingdale, NY:
Baywood.
517
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mastropieri, Scruggs, and Levin
Levin, J. R. (1986). Four cognitive principles of learning-strategy instruction.
Educational Psychologist, 21, 3-17.
Levin, J. R., Anglin, G. J., & Carney, R. N. (1987). On empirically validating
functions of pictures in prose. In D. M. Willows & H. A. Houghton (Eds.), The
psychology of illustration: I. Basic research (pp. 51-85). New York: SpringerVerlag.
Levin, J. R., McCormick, C. B., Miller, G. E, Berry, J. K., & Pressley, M. (1982).
Mnemonic versus nonmnemonic vocabulary-learning strategies for children.
American Educational Research Journal, 19, 121-136.
Levin, J. R., & Pressley, M. (1985). Mnemonic vocabulary instruction: What's fact,
what's fiction. In R. F. Dillon (Ed.), Individual differences in cognition (Vol. 2,
pp. 145-172). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Levin, J. R., Shriberg, L. K., & Berry, J. K. (1983). A concrete strategy for
remembering abstract prose. American Educational Research Journal, 20, 277290.
Mastropieri, M. A., & Scruggs, T. E. (1987). Effective instruction for special
education. Boston: Little Brown/College Hill.
Mastropieri, M. A., Scruggs, T. E., & Levin, J. R. (1987). Mnemonic instruction
in special education. In M. A. McDaniel & M. Pressley (Eds.), Imagery and
related mnemonic processes: Theories, individual differences, and applications
(pp. 358-376). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Morris, C. D., Bransford, J. D., & Franks, J. J. (1977). Levels of processing versus
transfer appropriate processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,
16, 519-533.
Paivio, A. (1971). Imagery and verbal processes. New York: Holt.
Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehensionfostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 1,
117-175.
Pressley, M., Borkowski, J. G., & Schneider, W. (in press). Cognitive strategies:
Good strategy users coordinate metacognition and knowledge. In R. Vasta & G.
Whitehurst (Eds.), Annals of child development (Vol. 4). Greenwich, CT: JAI
Press.
Rosenheck, M. B., Finch, M. E., & Levin, J. R. (1987, April). Comparison of
mnemonic and taxonomic science-learning strategies. Paper presented at the
annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington,
DC.
Scruggs, T. E., Mastropieri, M. A., & Levin, J. R. (in press). Implications of
mnemonic-strategy research for theories of learning disabilities. In H. L. Swanson
(Ed.), Memory and learning disabilities: Advances in learning and behavior
disabilities. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Scruggs, T. E., Mastropieri, M. A., McLoone, B., Levin, J. R., & Morrison, C. R.
(1987). Mnemonic facilitation of learning-disabled students' memory for expository prose. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 27-34.
Swanson, H. L. (Ed.), (in press). Memory and learning disabilities: Advances in
learning and behavior disabilities. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Veit, D. T., Scruggs, T. E., & Mastropieri, M. A. (1986). Extended mnemonic
instruction with learning disabled students. Journal of Educational Psychology,
78, 300-308.
518
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016
Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures
Wong, B. Y. L. (1985). Self-questioning instructional research: A review. Review
of Educational Research, 55, 227-268.
Worden, P. E. (1983). Memory strategy instruction with the learning disabled. In
M. Pressley & J. R. Levin (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: Psychological
foundations (pp. 129-153). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Authors
MARGO A. MASTROPIERI, Assistant Professor, Purdue University, Special
Education, SCC-E, West Lafayette, IN 47907. Specialization: learning and memory of exceptional populations.
THOMAS E. SCRUGGS, Visiting Assistant Professor, Purdue University, Special
Education, SCC-E, West Lafayette, IN 47907. Specializations: learning disabilities, research synthesis.
JOEL R. LEVIN, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin,
1025 W. Johnson St., Madison, WI53706. Specializations.learning and memory,
statistics and research design.
519
Downloaded from http://aerj.aera.net at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 16, 2016