Hey! I did research last spring on different kinds of mnemonics and how effective they were. I was originally inspired by memrise, so I thought I should share it back to you all. I really love the “mems” Memrise has, and I hope I can add to them.
Essentially, I made a bunch of Finnish to English flashcards, but with different types of mems Memrise would use. I tested a varying number of associations (like pictures) related to the word pairs, simple word mnemonics, abstract word mnemonics, and different combinations of all of the above.
I found a significant outlier out of the 12 mems I tested. This mem had both a typical word mnemonic, and an image that incorporated both the Finnish and English words. So for example, the Finnish translation for the word “to heal” is “parantua”, so I had an image of a “parant” healing their child, and a typical word mnemonic going along with the image, like “the parant was able to heal their child.”
I know most community mems are already like this, but my research adds to the case that this is the best kind of mem. Do you all prefer this kind of learning device?
I’ll leave a bar graph with the 12 mems and my slides for the research below if anyone is interested. Please tell me what you think of this!
https://smallpdf.com/shared#st=7f37d8bf-c5fe-4dbe-958a-86b2a8eddc2b&fn=Paired-associate+Recall+Study_+Different+Mems.pdf&ct=1602043682358&tl=share-document&rf=link