Pictorial cues and enhancement of patient recall of instructions or information.

Optometrists utilize handouts and pamphlets to facilitate information and instruction recall by their patients. A study was conducted to determine the effect of using pictorial cues. Thirty-six college students learned fifteen nouns in numerical order. In one condition subjects perceived the nouns alone, in another they perceived the nouns with illustrations. Half of the subjects in each condition were tested immediately after stimuli presentation; the remaining subjects were tested after a one-hour delay. It was determined that a picture-word association occurred, and decreased memory decay (longer memory) occurred for compound stimuli. This indicated that visual stimuli can facilitate word memory and pictorial cues would, therefore, be beneficial.