Levels of Processing Theory

Levels of processing theory was developed in the early 1970s to explain how different types of judgments influenced people's memory. The theory maintained that if people engaged in deeper processing of information when they acquired that information, they would have better memory for that information. The theory has been used by media psychologists to look at memory for different types of product placements, the influence of age on memory for advertisements, and the impact of surfing the web on information acquisition. However, the theory was largely abandoned by cognitive psychologists because of the circularity in the definition of what constituted deeper processing.