Differences Among Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Memorization Procedures when Children in Upper Elementary Schools are Memorizing a Text

Abstract

In education, a variety of methods for learning or memorizing content are often used, from reading a passage to listening to a lecture. This plethora of available strategies cause those involved in the educational field to wonder if there is a type of device that helps students best retain information. The study described in this paper determined whether children in the 4th and 5th grade memorize a visual text most effectively when given either a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic strategy. A total of 56 respondents were selected from a local elementary school and divided into three equal groups to memorize as much of a 151-word poem as possible. After students were given 15 minutes to utilize their given device, an assessment was given, during which they had to fill in 15 missing words from the poem they had been assigned. Based on scores from the assessment, this study was able to show that the visual device yielded a higher mean score of 8.5 than either the auditory score of 6.7 and a kinesthetic score of 6.5. A series of t-tests were conducted to conclude that the visual mean produced a p-value of 0.08 against audio and 0.09 against kinesthetic, which is significant at a level of 0.10. This evidence suggests that when young children are assigned the task of memorizing a short passage, visual devices may be the most optimal choice.