Levels of processing is a theory of memory proposed by psychologists Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart in a 1972 paper, arguing against the era's dominant multi-store models of memory by claiming that how well information is remembered depends not on which memory store it passes through but on the depth of mental processing applied to it at the time of encoding. Craik and Lockhart distinguished shallow processing, such as noting the visual appearance or sound of a word, from deep processing, such as considering a word's meaning and connecting it to existing knowledge, and their experiments found that tasks requiring deeper, meaning-based processing produced substantially better later recall than tasks requiring only shallow, surface-level processing of the same material. In education the theory is frequently invoked to explain why study techniques that require a learner to engage with the meaning of material, such as explaining it in their own words, produce more durable learning than techniques involving only shallow repetition, such as simply rereading or copying text.
Facts
Core ClaimThe levels of processing model holds that how deeply information is mentally processed, from shallow structural or phonemic processing to deep semantic processing, determines how durable the resulting memory trace is. 1 FAQs
Does repeating information over and over help long-term memory according to levels of processing?
No. The theory holds that repetition alone does not strengthen long-term memory, while processing the meaning of material does.
According to Craik and Lockhart, simply repeating information does little for long-term memory. They argued that rehearsal that consists only of repeating previous analyses, called maintenance rehearsal, does not enhance long-term memory. What helps is deeper processing, such as encoding the meaning of a word, which produces a more durable memory trace than shallow processing based on how a word looks or sounds. This view contradicts the multi-store Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model, which assumed that rehearsal always improves long-term memory.
Does the levels of processing effect show up on every kind of memory test?
No. It is found on explicit memory tests but not on implicit ones.
No. The levels-of-processing effect is only found for explicit memory tests, where a person is asked to recall a stimulus directly. Implicit memory tests instead measure a stimulus by later performance on related tasks, such as completing a word from its first letter, and in one word-completion study the usual effect was reversed. The effect is also modified by factors such as familiarity and the self-reference effect.
Connections
Developed By
Source Levels of processing model (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Levels of processing model (Wikipedia)
WikipediaLead paragraph, Wikipedia Levels of processing model article, retrieved 2026-09-09
The levels of processing model, created by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart in 1972, describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing.
Developed By: Fergus I. M. Craik, Lead
The levels of processing model, created by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart in 1972, describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing, where deeper levels of processing produce more elaborate and stronger memory than more shallow levels of processing.
In Group: Memory Models and Memory Effects, Lead
The levels of processing model, created by Fergus I. M. Craik and Robert S. Lockhart in 1972, describes memory recall of stimuli as a function of the depth of mental processing, where deeper levels of processing produce more elaborate and stronger memory than more shallow levels of processing.
View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.