The Effect of Interactive‐image Elaboration on the Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary

Interactive‐image mnemonics were used by college age men and women to learn the meanings of German words. One experimental treatment provided ready‐made interactive pictures and the other a procedure by which Ss could generate their own mental mnemonic pictures. The two control treatments included a repetition group and one which received no prescribed learning strategy. The two experimental groups remembered approximately twice as many words as either of the control groups, both on an immediate recall test and a delayed‐retention test two weeks later. Data from self‐reports suggested that over 75 per cent of the words which were remembered by S s across all treatment conditions (including the control groups) were learned by elaborative strategies. These results suggest that the use of elaborative devices, either spontaneously or by design, is a natural and effective way for Ss to approach this kind of task.