An examination of the effects of argument mapping on students' memory and comprehension performance

Argument mapping (AM) is a method of visually diagramming arguments to allow for easy comprehension of core statements and relations. A series of three experiments compared argument map reading and construction with hierarchical outlining, text summarisation, and text reading as learning methods by examining subsequent memory and comprehension performance. Effects of study environment, argument size, learning strategy (active and passive) and recall interval (immediate and delayed) were also examined. Results revealed that argument map reading and construction significantly increased subsequent immediate recall for arguments in both passive and active learning settings. These findings indicate that AM is a useful learning and teaching methodology, particularly in comparison with standard text-based learning. Results are discussed in light of research and theory on learning and memory.