The effect of testing and vocalisation on name face learning

Name-face learning is an important social function. The more name-face pairings there is to learn, the more difficult they are to remember. The aim of this research was to introduce mnemonic strategies designed to facilitate the memory of nameface pairs. Testing has been found to be a powerful tool in aiding recall of name-face pairings (Weinstein, McDermott & Szpunar, 2011) and is the first variable investigated in this study. The present study consists of two experiments, in both experiments participants were presented with 48 trials of name-face pairings which were split into four lists of 12. Participants were required to attempt to correctly recall the name of each face when tested. Experiment 1: Participants were 48 undergraduate students who were randomly split into one of three conditions; tested (tested after the presentation of each list), untested (tested after list four only) and restudy (restudied lists 1-3 and were then tested at list four). All participants were then required to complete a cumulative test on all of the faces form all of the lists they had seen. The results suggested that participants who were tested recalled significantly more name-face pairings than those who restudied and who were untested at the list four test and at the cumulative test. Vocalisation has been shown to improve memory of items (Gathercole & Conway, 1988), experiment 2 therefore included a further variable of vocalisation to assess whether vocalising names would improve recall of name-face pairings. Here, participants were 60 undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to one of three conditions; tested vocalise (tested after the presentation of each list and vocalised each name), tested not vocalise (tested after the presentation of each list and read each name silently) and restudy (restudied lists 1-3, tested at list four and read each name silently), all participants then completed a cumulative test on all of the name-face pairings they had seen from all four lists. Results from the second experiment suggested that there was no significant difference in the number of correctly recalled name-face pairings between vocalise and not vocalise participants at the list four test and the cumulative test.