1. Levels of Processing – Craik and Tulving- 1975
Visual- Shallowest Level of Processing
Is CAT written in capitals?
Is FLOOR written in red?
Auditory- Medium Level of Processing
Does CAT rhyme with chair?
Does FLOOR rhyme with door?
Semantic- Deepest Level of Processing
It has 8 legs and lives in the sea?
Does CAT fit into this sentence?
The ____ chased after the mouse.
Personal Relevance
If it is connected to you in some way.
Effort
The effort involved to remember or work something out.
Elaboration
How into detail something goes.
Distinctiveness
How different or ‘weird’ something is
In the original test that Craik and Tulving conducted in 1975, they presented participants with a list of words via a tachistoscope. The words had questions with yes and no answers and corresponded to one of the Levels of Processing. They were then asked later to recognise the words from the original lists.
It was found that there were significantly better results from words processed semantically, and also if a question was answered yes, rather than no a word was recalled better.