Going through these exercises really helped me reflect on the strategies I use to remember information.  I definitely experienced the dual channels for auditory/phonetic and visual/spatial that Baddeley described on the long list number recall because I recited some of the numbers in a repeating loop while holding a picture of some of the other numbers in my mind.  I could not have pictured all of the numbers nor could I have repeated all of the numbers but I could hold both processes in my mind at once to remember a greater percentage of the numbers.  Also, just as Baddeley asserted, meaning associations were the most powerful memory aids for me.  On Item 14, most of the names I remembered were family members’ names.  In fact, this association was so strong in my mind that I erroneously substituted by brother’s name, Jason, for Jay.  When I first started the paired word recall, I can remember thinking to myself, “How in the world am I going to remember this?”  Then I started creating connections between the words.  I pictured actions in my head.  I did much better on that exercise than I expected.  I actually performed worse on the paired words involving imagery because I found the pictures distracting from my own connections.  Interestingly, Vince Kellen wrote a dissertation on how students with poor spatial skills can actually be hindered in learning by complex images.  I did feel more stressed during that exercise as I simultaneously worked to interpret both the words and the pictures.  This creates a caveat to the comments I made in my last blog post, where I discussed the importance of appealing to multiple modalities.  It raises the question of how a teacher can predict when involving multiple senses will aid learning and will it distract.  For me the images distracted by forcing associations other than the ones I was ready to make.