Memory Models and Memory Effects

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.

Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) is a type of state-dependent memory specifically showing that memory performance is not only determined by the depth of processing (where associating meaning with information strengthens memory; see levels-of-processing effect), but by the relationship between how information is initially encoded and how it is later retrieved.

Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.

In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect (named after Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik) postulates that people remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve measures the decline of memory retention across time, showing how information is lost when there is no attempt to retain it.

The von Restorff effect, also known as the isolation effect, predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus that differs from the rest is more likely to be remembered.

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model (also known as the multi-store model or modal model) is a model of memory proposed in 1968 by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin.

The picture superiority effect refers to the phenomenon in which pictures and images are more likely to be remembered than words.