The effect of imagery on meaning and form recognition and recall of idioms

"This research project aims at investigating whether the use of imagery -- pictures and etymological notes -- has a facilitative effect on the recognition and recall of the form and meaning of American idioms. Spanish speakers (n = 71) enrolled in English programs in Argentina participated in a pretest, a learning phase activity, and an immediate post-test. One week later, participants (n = 39) took a delayed post-test in-person or online. All tests had the same format: a sentence completion task, a receptive form multiple-choice task, a definition task, and a receptive meaning multiple-choice task. Results indicate that all conditions -- including pictures, etymological notes, and the combination of both -- had no statistically significant differences between them, and thus, they all contributed to idiom learning. However, the data also shows a tendency for pictures to facilitate structural elaboration of idioms in the short-term while etymological notes seem to hinder it."--Page ii.