The effectiveness of E-supplied and S-originated first-letter and descriptive-sentence mnemonics were compared to a simple-repetition condition. Ss using E-supplied schemes suffered no significant losses in recall of 10 word-pairs over 6 wk., while Ss in the other 3 conditions showed significant retention losses at 2-day and 6-wk. intervals. The E-supplied schemes were significantly superior to S-originated schemes which in turn excelled the simple-repetition condition. There were no differences in recall between the two E-supplied groups or between the two S-originated conditions. It was concluded that the source of the mnemonic was the crucial variable affecting recall.
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