Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0022-0663/97/J3.00
Journal of Educational Psychology
1997, Vol. 89, No. 4,682-685
Mechanisms That Facilitate the Effectiveness of Elaboration Strategies
Teena Willoughby
Eileen Wood
Brock University
Wilfrid Laurier University
Serge Desmarais
Suzanne Sims
University of Guelph
St. Mary's University
Michelle Kalra
University of Guelph
The authors examined the role of distinctiveness in the differential memory performance of
visual and verbal elaboration strategies. Twenty-eight undergraduates learned information
about familiar and unfamiliar animals while using either the visual (imagery) or verbal
(answering why questions) elaboration strategies. There was no difference between the 2
strategies in level of organization for the familiar animal material, but imagery students
organized unfamiliar animal information into intact sets more than verbal elaboration students.
Imagery easily permits the generation of relations and distinctions for unfamiliar material
through the creation of unique mental images. In contrast, learners using verbal elaboration
may be more likely to access general rather than specific information when answering why
questions for unfamiliar information.
In an effort to enhance independent learning in the
classroom, many researchers and educators have advocated
instructing students to use a variety of powerful elaboration
strategies. New information can be made more memorable if
learners create meaningful elaborations (e.g., Stein, Morris,
& Bransford, 1978). The source of elaborations can be both
visual (e.g., imagery) or verbal (e.g., answering questions).
Apart from determining that a strategy works, researchers
also have been increasingly motivated to explain how
strategies work to better predict for whom and for which
situations strategies will be most effective. The purpose of
this paper was to investigate the mechanisms that facilitate
the effectiveness of elaboration strategies by examining the
role of distinctiveness in the differential memory performance of visual and verbal elaboration strategies.
When using visual elaboration strategies (e.g., imagery),
adult students are often asked to form a mental picture of a
word or situation (Paivio, 1971, 1991). Marschark, Richman, Yuille, and Hunt (1987) suggest that the typical
Teena Willoughby, Department of Child Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada; Eileen Wood, Department of
Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada;
Serge Desmarais and Michelle Kalra, Department of Psychology,
University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada; Suzanne Sims,
Department of Psychology, St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova
Scotia, Canada.
This article was supported by grants from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This study was
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, San Francisco, California, April 1995.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Teena Willoughby, Department of Child Studies, Brock University,
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1. Electronic mail may be
sent via Internet to twiUoug@spartan.ac.brocku.ca.
682
potency of the imagery strategy can be explained through
two processes, the building of relations and distinctions.
When learning prose material, relations can be understood
as the creation of interactive images or links between pieces
of information and distinctions as the creation of a unique
representation for one group of items relative to other
groups. For example, if students were instructed to create
mental images of a series of animal facts, they would make
interactive images or relations among the facts for each
animal (i.e., students would imagine the animal exhibiting
the stated trait or behavior). Then students would make a
unique and distinctive image for each animal apart from the
other animals. Therefore, relations would be constructed
within one animal, whereas distinctions would be made
between different animals. At test, when students are asked
to identify the facts that correspond to each animal, they can
draw on their construction of relations to allow them to
access the appropriate image while having a distinctive
image for each animal would help them retrieve the correct
animal name (see Einstein & Hunt, 1980; Hunt & Einstein,
1981).
Both adult and child populations can be instructed to
create mental images to facilitate acquisition of prose
materials (Pressley, Symons, McDaniel, Snyder, & Tumure,
1988; Woloshyn, Willoughby, Wood, & Pressley, 1990;
Wood, Pressley, & Winne, 1990). Imagery strategies may be
particularly advantageous because they allow learners to
generate concrete images even from unfamiliar material. For
example, when asked to learn facts about an unfamiliar
animal, learners can create a mnemonic for the animal name,
which would allow them to create a concrete image (e.g.,
coat for coat; see Willoughby, Wood, & Khan, 1994). Verbal
elaboration strategies, in contrast, have also facilitated
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ELABORATION STRATEGIES
memory performance but the mechanisms that foster learning may differ.
Elaborative interrogation is a verbal questioning strategy
that enhances learning by encouraging students to connect
novel information to their own richly developed knowledge
base (Martin & Pressley, 1991). The strategy is potent for
both children and adults across a variety of learning tasks
(see Pressley et al., 1992, for a review). Specifically,
students using elaborative interrogation answer a why question for each fact (e.g., "Why would that fact be true?").
When students are asked to generate answers to why
questions, they are encouraged to draw on their existing
knowledge (cf. Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991). By relating
what they already know to the new information, links are
created with existing information and memory for the
material is therefore facilitated (Anderson, 1990; Bower,
Black, & Turner, 1979; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Thorndyke &
Yekovich, 1980). Willoughby, Waller, Wood, and MacKinnon (1993) demonstrated that the amount of prior knowledge affects learning gains with elaborative interrogation
(see also Kuhara-Kojima & Hatano, 1991, and Woloshyn,
Pressley, & Schneider, 1992, for a related discussion). When
learning animal facts, memory for familiar animals was
more easily integrated with existing knowledge and produced greater memory performance relative to rare or
unfamiliar animals.
One disadvantage for elaborative interrogation relative to
imagery may be that when presented with facts about
unfamiliar objects, learners using elaborative interrogation
may be able to create relations but fail to process distinctions
between the objects. For example, general information
rather than specific information may be accessed when
answering why questions about unfamiliar animals. This
could prevent the processing of distinctive information
between the animals. In addition, students may access
information about an inappropriate animal when searching
their prior knowledge for information that may relate to
unfamiliar animals. For example, students may make the
association of fish to the unfamiliar animal American Pika
because it sounds like pike, but they have to revise their
conception when they encounter facts that are not consistent
with fish (for example, the American Pika lives around rock
piles). This would result in a lack of distinctiveness for that
animal at retrieval.
For many studies comparing elaborative interrogation to
imagery, there are no significant differences between the two
strategies in facilitation of memory performance (Pressley et
al., 1988; Woloshyn et al., 1990). However, differences are
apparent when object familiarity has been manipulated. The
two strategies are equally potent when novel facts about
familiar concepts are encountered, but there is an advantage
for imagery when facts about unfamiliar concepts are used
(Willoughby, Wood, & Khan, 1994). Willoughby et al.
explained this advantage by suggesting that when students
use imagery, they are not required to make logical connections to their knowledge base. Creating an image of an
animal (any image of it, whether consistent with reality or
not) provides the learner with a unique or distinctive peg for
each animal (Paivio, 1971).
Memory performance in existing studies comparing imagery and elaborative interrogation was measured through
matching tasks where students were asked to match animals
with facts associated with them. The memory advantage for
imagery on such tasks presumably reflects access to highly
developed connections between the animals and their related
facts. In this study, we examined students' organization of
the material at retrieval rather than through the typical
matching test. There would be support for the hypothesis if
imagery students organized the facts into accurate, intact
stories (i.e., no errors in grouping appropriate animal facts)
more often than elaborative interrogation students. Because
any peg will do in the case of the imagery strategy, it was
expected that imagery would be a better strategy than
elaborative interrogation for unfamiliar animals, although
both strategies should be effective with familiar animals.
Method
Participants and Design
Twenty-eight students (22 men and 6 women) enrolled in a
first-year psychology course participated in this experiment. Students ranged in age from 19 to 33 years (M — 22 years, SD - 3
years, 8 months). Students were drawn from one university in a
midsize Canadian city. Students were randomly assigned to either
an elaborative interrogation or imagery strategy condition. Proportionately equal numbers of men and women were assigned to each
condition.
Materials
The stimulus materials consisted of 10 sets of animal facts. Each
set was composed of six statements describing the type and special
attributes of one of 10 animals (5 familiar and 5 unfamiliar
animals). Each of the six statements described one characteristic of
an animal (e.g., physical living environment, diet, source of
predation). Five of the animals were judged to be familiar to
students (i.e.. Swift Fox, House Mouse, Little Brown Bat, Townsend
Mole, and Western Spotted Skunk) and five were judged to be
unfamiliar (i.e., pronghorn, coati, chickaree, American Pika, Collared Peccary). To ensure that the familiar and unfamiliar animals
selected for this study would indeed correspond to undergraduate
students' knowledge, Willoughby et al. (1993) pretested a comparable student population for familiarity with the animals and facts
(see the Appendix for an example of a familiar and unfamiliar
animal set). The 10 animals were chosen because the students
indicated unanimously that they were either familiar with the
animals (selected for familiar animals) or unfamiliar with the
animals (selected for unfamiliar animals). Each sentence was typed
on one white 12-cm X 19-cm card. Three cards served as examples
that were used when instructions were provided to the students. The
60 remaining sentences were the study materials.
Procedure
The experimental phase included instructions, practice, presentation of the study materials, and a memory task.
Instructions and practice. Participants were told that they
would be shown individual sentences stating true facts about
animals and that they would be asked to remember that information. Students in the elaborative interrogation condition were
instructed to read each sentence and answer out loud the why
684
WTLLOUGHBY, WOOD, DESMARAIS, SIMS, AND KALRA
question written below each statement. They were told that their
answer should clearly state why the fact was true of the specific
animal being discussed and not another similar animal. Students in
the imagery condition were instructed to read each sentence and
make an interactive picture in their mind linking the animal to each
fact, so that the image clearly depicted the animal being discussed
and not another similar animal. Students were not required to make
a collective image for the six facts about each animal.
Three example sentences were used to ensure that students could
effectively execute their assigned strategy. Feedback was provided
about their performance. For example, students in the elaborative
interrogation condition were prompted to elaborate their answer
further or generate another elaboration if their answer did not
explain the relation between the animal and its behavior. Students
in the imagery condition were required to describe their image out
loud during practice. This manipulation check was done to ensure
that all students were able to generate an image even for the more
difficult items. For the practice items, additional prompting was
given if students did not describe a full image. All students were
capable of creating images for the practice items.
Study phase. Students were reminded of the instructions and
the 60 facts were presented with no feedback provided. Each
sentence was presented for 15 s, with a 15-s interval separating the
presentation of each of the 10 animal sets. Sentences were
presented in a constant order across students. A paced presentation
was used to ensure that all students had access to the material for
the same amount of time across all strategy conditions. For the
elaborative interrogation students, the experimental session was
audiotaped to ensure that students complied with instructions. To
avoid interference with the creation of visual images, we did not
require students in the imagery condition to verbalize their images
during the study phase and no recording was made of the
experimental session for the imagery students. However, after the
session was completed (i.e., after the memory task), we asked
students in the imagery condition to describe their images that they
had created for 4 randomly picked animal facts (this manipulation
check was also audiotaped).
Memory test. After all 60 sentences were presented, the
participants first were asked to organize the animals facts into intact
stories (animal names were absent). Each fact was typed on a
separate sheet of paper and students were instructed to sort the 60
randomly presented facts into organized units. Students knew,
however, that the stories were to be organized according to animal
type. Later, these students were asked to indicate either the name of
the animal they thought corresponded to each set of facts or any
descriptors that they might have associated with the facts.
Results
The transcription of the audiotapes confirmed that all
students complied with instructions and used their assigned
strategy. That is, during study, all elaborative interrogation
students answered why each fact was true, whereas after the
memory test, each imagery participant was able to verbalize
the images they had created for the four designated facts (see
procedure). The primary analyses examined students' organization of the facts into intact animal stories. The percentage
of animal units that were correctly organized into intact
stories was calculated for both familiar and unfamiliar
animals. Because of some distributional characteristics of
the data, we analyzed the percentage scores for both the
familiar and unfamiliar animals using the nonparametric
Kruskal-Wallis test (Siegel & Castellan, 1988). Strategy
Table 1
Mean Percentage of Familiar and Unfamiliar Animals
Organized Into Intact Animal Sets as a Function of Strategy
Condition in Experiment 1
Unfamiliar animals
Familiar animals
M
Strategy condition
M
SD
SD
Elaborative interro27.0
14.7
gation
32.0
8.0
Imagery
35.9
23.3
24.6
33.8
condition was the between-subjects variable. (See Table 1
for means.) Consistent with our expectations, there were no
differences in organization for facts about familiar animals,
X2(l, N = 28) = .01, p > .05, but imagery students more
often organized unfamiliar animal facts into accurate, intact
stories compared with students in the elaborative interrogation condition, x 2 d, N = 28) = 4.84,p < .05.
After students organized the facts at retrieval, they were
instructed to indicate the name of the animal they thought
corresponded to each set of facts that they constructed. This
task replicated previous studies where students matched the
facts with the appropriate animal name. Memory performance was determined by adding the number of correct
matches (animal name with fact). Using the Kruskal-Wallis
test again (Siegel & Castellan, 1988), imagery and elaborative interrogation conditions did not differ in performance
for familiar animals, x2(l> N = 28) = .86, p > .05, but
imagery outperformed elaborative interrogation with unfamiliar animals, x 2 (l, N = 28) = 6.48, p < .05. (See Table 2
for relevant means.)
Discussion
Imagery most likely outperforms elaborative interrogation for unfamiliar facts because it encourages the construction of the basic association between the fact and its referent
(relations) as well as more attention to distinctions as a result
of creating unique images for each animal. Because elaborative interrogation, in contrast, forces students to go beyond the
given information, they have difficulty using the strategy successfully when only general background knowledge is available.
Both relations and distinctions are important mechanisms
with respect to the efficient use of verbal and visual
elaboration strategies. Whereas imagery easily permits the
Table 2
Mean Matching Scores for Familiar and Unfamiliar
Animals as a Function of Strategy Condition
in Experiment I
Familiar animals
Unfamiliar animals
Strategy condition
M
SD
M
SD
Elaborative interrrogation
Imagery
19.33
16.62
7.78
7.92
3.80
10.08
5.09
6.14
Note,
Maximum score is 30 for familiar and unfamiliar animals.
685
ELABORATION STRATEGIES
generation of relations and distinctions through the creation
of unique mental images, verbal elaboration is more tied to
prior knowledge. Elaborative interrogation requires access
to existing knowledge and making associations between the
learners' prior knowledge and the new material. When
learners have access to a rich knowledge base, the strategy
promotes the creation of unique or specific associations and
memory is facilitated. With a more limited knowledge base,
however, students using the elaborative interrogation strategy may be more likely to access general rather than specific
information leading to a lack of distinctiveness for the
material. Imagery, therefore, may be the strategy of choice
when learning information accessing an unfamiliar domain.
By enhancing our understanding of when and how strategies
work, we can better assure that strategy instruction is
designed to maximize learning.
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Appendix
Example of a Familiar and Unfamiliar Animal Set
Western Spotted Skunk (Familiar Animal)
Collared Peccary (Unfamiliar Animal)
1. The Western Spotted Skunk's hole is usually found on a
sandy piece of farmland near crops.
2. The Western Spotted Skunk mostly eats corn.
3. The Western Spotted Skunk's biggest danger is the Great
Horned Owl.
4. The Western Spotted Skunk lives in a hole in the ground.
5. The Western Spotted Skunk often lives alone but sometimes
stays together in families.
6. The Western Spotted Skunk is able to live close to people but
never be seen.
1. The Collared Peccary lives in southwestern United States.
2. The Collared Peccary eats roots and cacti.
3. The Collared Peccary's biggest dangers are the jaguar and
mountain lion.
4. The Collared Peccary often rests in bushes or under large
boulders.
5. The Collared Peccary has no obvious leaders among its males
and females.
6. The Collared Peccary's stomach has two sections.
Received April 2,1996
Revision received February 27,1997
Accepted February 28,1997 •