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Craik & Lockhart (1972) used an incidental learning task to examine the hypothesis that the manner of encoding affects the strength of the resulting memory trace. Research participants in the incidental learning task viewed a series of words on a computer screen and answered simple yes/no questions about those words (e.g., "Is the word printed in capital letters?").
The types of questions the participants were asked to answer were designed to affect the manner in which the words were encoded into memory. Certain questions had participants encode the '''physical''' aspects of the stimuli (e.g., "Is the word printed in capital letters?"). Other questions had participants encode the '''acoustic''' properties of the stimuli (e.g., "Does this word rhyme with "
Craik & Lockhart predicted that attending to the physical features of the stimuli would result in shallow encoding and a weak memory trace. Attending to the acoustic properties of the stimuli would result in a moderate level of processing and a moderately strong memory trace. Attending to the semantic properties of the stimulus would result in the deepest level of processing and the strongest memory trace. The results of the experiment confirmed the hypothesis. The deeper the level of processing, the more likely it was that the word would be remembered. Also, there was higher recall when the words were connected by logic (fish and ocean)<!-- this would indicate an association in semantic memory -->, as opposed to concretely connected words (fish and hand). Effects such as these are termed the self-reference effect.<!-- This is just wrong. The self-reference effect is when memory is improved because the person encodes the new information by tying the information in with his or her own life and experiences-->
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