Why Do Embedded Picture Mnemonics Make Letter Sounds Easier to Learn?

Beside vs. inside

Pictures help. Where they sit matters

If you learned your letters from an alphabet chart with an apple beside the A, you’re in good company. Many children learn their letters just fine with a picture beside them. But research shows that where the picture sits matters: a picture built into the letter works better than one beside it.

Researchers use the term working memory for the space where the brain holds information while using it. Think of working memory as a backpack every child brings to learning. Some children’s backpacks have lots of room. Others are already heavy, perhaps because a child is very young or finds language or attention a little harder.

A picture beside a letter adds one more thing to carry: the job of connecting the two. The child has to look at the letter, look at the picture, and build the bridge between them on their own. Meanwhile, the familiar picture often grabs the child’s attention, while the letter, the part they actually need to learn, fades into the background (Evans et al., 2009).

Children with room to spare carry that extra job easily, which is why so many of us learned this way. For children whose backpacks are already heavy, that one extra thing can be what makes it hard.

An embedded picture mnemonic packs the picture and the letter into one. Nothing helpful is left out, and nothing extra goes in the backpack. Children who would have been fine either way still benefit. Research also suggests the picture works best when it gradually fades, leaving just the letter (de Graaff et al., 2007).

Idea 1 · Overshadowing

The picture can steal the spotlight

When a bright, familiar picture sits next to a plain, unfamiliar letter, the picture often wins. In one study that tracked where children’s eyes went, kindergarteners reading alphabet books looked at the pictures first and spent little time on the print (Evans et al., 2009).

Researchers call this overshadowing: when two things are shown together, the more eye-catching one gets most of the learning. It can happen even with a picture the child has never seen before (Dittlinger & Lerman, 2011). One review looked at 37 experiments that paired pictures with print. In about two-thirds of them, the picture got in the way of learning the print (Kennedy & Cariveau, 2024).

Most of those studies taught whole words. For single letters, building the picture into the letter’s shape has the opposite effect. Children in these studies remembered the letter sounds better, wrote the letters more accurately, and learned them faster (Ehri et al., 1984; Shmidman & Ehri, 2010; Kalender, 2026). Research on embedded picture mnemonics now spans over 40 years. When the picture is the letter, there is much less to compete with. Looking at the picture is looking at the letter.

Idea 3 · Cognitive load

Less work to find the answer

Because the clues are joined in one meaningful design, the child likely works less to remember the sound. There are also fewer separate pieces to hold in mind and link together.

Researchers call the problem it avoids the split-attention effect. When two pieces of information that belong together are shown apart, the learner has to join them. That joining work takes up room in the backpack (Paas & van Merriënboer, 2020). An embedded picture mnemonic does the joining in advance. The total mental work a task demands is called cognitive load, and doing the joining ahead of time can lower it.

This matters because reading requires children to do more than recall one sound. To blend letters into a word, they must recall several letter sounds, hold them in order, and combine them smoothly.

Try it at home

Three small moves that make the picture work

You don’t need a lesson plan. Each one fits into a minute at the kitchen table or a page of a bedtime book.

• Say the picture, then say the soundEvery time you practice, say the picture first, then the sound: “snake… /s/.” Then ask your child for just the sound.
• Forgot the sound? Ask, don’t tellStuck on a plain s? Point to the snake s and let your child name it. Then ask, “What’s the first sound in snake?” If they’re not sure, that’s okay. Show them: “Snake… /s/. That’s the first sound, and that’s how we remember it.” Listening for that first sound builds phonological awareness: noticing the sounds inside words.
• Go on a letter huntStart with the snake s. Then hunt for a plain s on a keyboard, a book cover, or a cereal box. Can your child find the same shape?

Over time, the plain letter can bring back the sound on its own.