The effect of self-reference, semantic, and rote processing on the retention of paired-associates was examined at intervals of 5 min. and 2 wk. 25 subjects per group were given 120 sec. to process each of 15 paired-associates by self-reference, semantic, or rote. The pairs were a low meaningful nonsense word and a high meaningful English noun. At both retention intervals, self-reference and semantic processing produced significantly higher retention than rote processing and there was no difference in retention between self-reference and semantic processing. The results were compared with those of similar studies.
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