LONG-TERM RETENTION UNDER CONDITIONS OF INTENTIONAL LEARNING AND THE KEYWORD MNEMONIC

This study was designed to assess long-term retention following either keyword learning or rote rehearsal under conditions of intentional le arning. A 2 condition (keyword vs. rote rehearsal) x time (immediate v s. delay) completely randomized design was used, with 24 Tagalog langu age nouns serving as the learning material. All subjects had uniformly high levels of retention on the immediate test of cued recall. Howeve r, on the delayed test of cued recall (2 days later), keyword learners had forgotten almost twice the number of items as had subjects who ha d rehearsed the same material by rote. Long-term forgetting was also g reater for the keyword condition than for rote rehearsal when subjects were assessed by a test of associative matching. This pattern of resu lts replicates earlier research that has revealed a detrimental long-t erm effect of the keyword mnemonic under conditions of incidental lear ning.