Musical Mnemonics as an Aid to Retention With Normal and Learning Disabled Students

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of melodic-rhythmic mnemonics as an aid to short-term memory. Subjects included 30 learning disabled and 30 normal male students, ages 9.0 to 11.9 years. All subjects participated in two experiments conducted over a period of 3 days. Experiment 1 consisted of a pretest, a single rehearsal of the memory task, and a posttest to examine the effects of group membership (learning disabled or normal) and the effects of rehearsal mode (musical or verbal) on retention. Results from Experiment 1 indicated that both normal subject membership and verbal rehearsal resulted in significantly greater recall at the .05 level. There was no significant interaction effect of group by rehearsal mode. In Experiment 2, four additional memory task rehearsals were completed to examine the effects of the following variables upon retention: group membership, rehearsal mode, teaching method (repetition versus repetition with modeling and cuing) and time. Results revealed that musical rehearsal in conjunction with modeling and cuing significantly aided retention for both groups (p < .0001). Further hypotheses for main effects and interactions were statistically nonsignificant at the .05 level.

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