Learning-Disabled Students’ Memory for Expository Prose: Mnemonic Versus Nonmnemonic Pictures

Abstract

Sixty-seven learning-disabled (LD) students read passages that offered reasons for dinosaur extinction. The reasons were presented in decreasing order of their plausibility. Students were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: In the nonmnemonic-picture condition, pictorial representations of each reason accompanied the text; in the mnemonic-picture condition, the same pictorial representations included direct mnemonic links to the reasons’ plausibility numbers; and in the no-picture control condition, no illustrations were provided. Consistent with recent theoretical analyses of the different prose-learning functions of pictures, in comparison to the no-picture control condition (a) both nonmnemonic and mnemonic pictures facilitated students’ free recall of the extinction reasons; (b) only mnemonic pictures facilitated students’ recall of the reasons in conjunction with their plausibility numbers; and (c) neither mnemonic nor nonmnemonic pictures facilitated students’ recall of additional, unpictured, factual information from the passage. No performance differences among conditions were found on a near-transfer task that required reason-plausibility judgments. The results are discussed in the general context of illustrations as applied to LD students’ learning from text.