What They Remember May Not Be What They Understand: A Study of Mnemonic Recall and Performance by Introductory Statistics Students

A large-scale (n = 1323) survey of mnemonic recall, self-reported familiarity, cued explanation, and application by introductory statistics students was conducted at a large research university in the southeastern United States. The students were presented 14 mnemonics during the fall 2017 term. Different non-overlapping cohorts of students were asked at different time points to complete a survey about mnemonic use. At each time point, the students were asked to recall any mnemonic that they remembered, explain the mnemonic when cued, self-report their degree of familiarity, and apply the mnemonic. Of the 14 mnemonics, acronym-type mnemonics were recalled more frequently, but longer phrase-type mnemonics were explained and applied more often. These findings suggest that instructors should provide scaffolding to move a student from recalling a mnemonic to using a mnemonic toward successful completion of the statistics problem at hand.