The Effects of Dynamic Visual Enhancement and Working Memory on the Recall of Spanish Vocabulary

This study investigates whether dynamic visual enhancement affects the recall of second language (L2) vocabulary and whether working memory interacts with visual enhancement and vocabulary recall. Participants in four groups completed a pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test that measured the effects of the type of dynamic enhancement they received (no enhancement, word enhancement, image enhancement, word and image enhancement) on their recall of L2 vocabulary. Results, based on a series of one-way ANOVAs and ANCOVAs, revealed that participants in the word only or image only dynamically enhanced groups recalled significantly more vocabulary items on the immediate post-test; however, by the delayed post-test, the effect remained only for those in the image only group. Working memory capacity was not found to have any correlation with vocabulary test scores.