The effects of depth of processing and number of orienting tasks on the explicit memories measured by free recall, recognition, and cued recall tests

Abstract

This study examined the effects of depth of processing and elaboration on explicit memories. The depth of processing was altered by three types of orienting tasks: physically featured, semantically featured, and self-referentially featured encoding conditions. The degree of the elaboration was manipulated by varying the number of orienting tasks: one group of participants coped with one task and the other group with three tasks. In the first experiment participants in the semantically featured and self-referentially featured conditions showed significantly better performance than those in the physically featured condition for the free recall and recognition tests. The result indicated clear effects of the depth of processing. In the second experiment the performance of a cued recall test by the participants did not change as a function of elaboration, but it varied in relation to the depth of processing. In addition, in both experiments a significantly better performance for the free recall test was demonstrated by participants in the three task condition. The results are discussed in terms of the levels-of-processing and elaboration of encoding hypotheses.