A Pattern-Analyzing Basis of Recognition
Laird S. Cermak, Fergus I.M. Craik · Psychology Press eBooks · 2014
The dominating notion underlying the levels-of-processing proposal of Craik and Lockhart (1972) is that the properties of a message or “ word event” are extracted in a sequence of analytical operations. These are sometimes spoken of in terms of levels (yielding the metaphor of “ depth of processing” ) and sometimes in terms of domains. Others more qualified than I as students of memory have described the virtues of this view, compared to the previously popular stage theories of memory. In the earlier view, memory was thought of as a number of places, usually defined by the number of items each contained or the duration of time for which items could be recalled-primary and secondary; or short-, medium-, and long-term, and so on. The superficial features of object appearance were said to be in short-term or primary memory, whereas more meaningful properties were in long-term or secondary memory, extracted from the superficial appearance usually by means of a linguistic encoding. How the smell of a flower, the sound of a quartet, or other nonlinguistic experiences were recognized and recalled was often a problem for those theories.