The impact of mnemonic strategies on name recall

Recalling names is a difficult task in everyday life and names are often forgotten. The face-name mnemonic strategy proposes to improve name recall by assigning semantic information to face-name pairs through imagery. The technique involves three steps: transforming the name into an imageable object, selecting a prominent facial feature, and imagining the name transformation interacting with the prominent facial feature. Name recall involves mentally retracing these steps. Previous research has shown positive outcomes with this strategy, but there is limited exploration of strategy components and potential strategy use in real life. Here, we examined the effectiveness of three mnemonic strategies on name recall and explored strategy adherence and potential use in real life with questionnaires. Across two experiments, we found that a modified version of the mnemonic resulted in significantly higher name recall when participants complied with strategy instructions compared to when participants were instructed to recall to the best of their ability. Questionnaire responses showed that uninstructed participants used repetition, focused on distinct facial features, or related the individual in the photo to familiar people to recall names. We propose that the name-transformation mnemonic strategy can be applied to forenames when learning names to improve recall.