Depth of Processing in Recall and Recognition

The levels-of-processing approach to the study of memory, advocated by Craik and Lockhart (1972), is briefly reviewed. Previous studies are described which suggest that elaboration, rather than "depth" of encoding, may provide a better description of some results. In these experiments, subjects made decisions about words at input; the decisions induced the subjects to process the words structurally, phonemically, or semantically. A retention test for the words followed the input phase. Two recent studies using the same paradigm showed that both copying down the word at input and holding the word in mind for 5 seconds before making a decision about it, led to improved retention of words encoded structurally and phonemically. These further results suggest some principles of memory function.