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Levels of Processing Theory
LEVELS OF PROCESSING THEORY
The Theory
• Craik & Lockhart (1972) proposed that stimulus inputs undergo successive
processing operations. The early stages of processing are “shallow” and involve
coding the stimulus in terms of its physical characteristics (e.g. the visual
characteristics of the letters and typeface in which a word is printed, or the
acoustic features of a sound). “Deep” processing involves coding the stimulus
more abstractly in terms of its meaning. So, visual and acoustic coding are shallow,
but semantic coding is deep.
• Rehearsing material by simple rote repetition is called maintenance rehearsal
and is classified as shallow. Rehearsing material by exploring its meaning and
linking it to semantically associated words is called elaborative rehearsal and is
classified as deep.
• The crucial assumption of this levels of processing theory is that retention of an
item is dependent on the depth or level of processing carried out on to-be-
remembered material. Superficial processing leads only to shallow, short-term
retention; deep processing leads to efficient, durable retention.
The Evidence
• Elias & Perfetti (1973) gave subjects a number of different tasks to perform on
each word in a list, such as finding another word that rhymes or finding a word that
means the same or similar (synonym) to the word on the list. The rhyming task
involved only acoustic coding and hence was a shallow level of processing. The
synonym task involved semantic coding and hence was a deep level of processing.
The subjects were not told that they would be asked to recall the words, but
nevertheless they did remember some of the words when subsequently tested.
This is called incidental learning as opposed to intentional or deliberate learning.
The subjects recalled significantly more words following the synonym task than
following the rhyming task, suggesting that deeper levels of processing leads to
better recall.
Hyde & Jenkins (1973) carried out a typical experiment using the incidental learning
technique. Different groups of subjects performed one of the following five tasks on a
list of words:
o rating the words for pleasantness (e.g. is “donkey” a pleasant word?)
o estimating the frequency with which each word is used in the English language
(e.g. how often does “donkey” appear in the English language?)
