Levels of Processing and the Retention of Word Meanings

Abstract

The effect of three encoding techniques, rote, semantic, and self-reference, on short-term and long-term retention levels of the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary words was examined. 72 college students participated in the experiment, with 24 students in each encoding group Ail participants viewed 20 target words and their definitions for 30 sec. Rote subjects were instructed to write just the word and its definition, semantic subjects were told to use the word in a sentence, and self-reference subjects wrote how the word might or might not describe themselves. After a 5-min. distractor task, subjects were tested on the recall of the definitions of those words. A retest was administered after 1 wk. As hypothesized, self-reference processing produced significantly higher retention than semantic processing, and semantic processing produced higher retention than rote processing. Encoding by self-reference was the most successful strategy for processing the meanings of unfamiliar nouns and adjectives.