09+-+Question

**Contrast maintenance rehearsal with elaborative rehearsal. **
**Name: Micah Martens**



Maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal, although both concerned with transferring stimuli into memory, take two very different paths to achieving that goal. Maintenance rehearsal focuses on keeping information in short-term memory, by repeating, often verbally, that information. For instance, when your friend tells you their phone number and you repeat the digits to yourself over and over until you can write them down or enter them in your phone as a new contact. While this technique works for transferring information into short-term memory, it is much less effective in transferring the same information to long-term memory. This is because maintenance rehearsal does not consider the meaning, or semantics, of the information. When you repeat numbers to yourself in an attempt to remember that friend's number, you are not searching for some deeper meaning in the succession of numbers.

The only effective way to get stimuli into long-term memory is through Elaborative rehearsal. Here analyzing the meaning of the stimuli allows for deeper processing and understanding. We do this by connecting the new information to information already contained in our long-term memory. These associations add meaning to the information and aid the memorization process. For instance, in English class, when the teacher presents a vocabulary word and asks you to use it in a sentence, she is forcing you, in a sense, to utilize elaborative rehearsal in attempt to ensure the word is transferred to long-term memory. The association you make between that word and your sentence structures, which are already cemented into your long-term memory, allow you to better remember the new information.

Citations:

"Psychology Class Notes Memory." //Psychology of Memory //. AlleyDog, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015. "Memory Rehearsal." //Wikipedia //. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.

Image Citation: Back-up memory. Digital image. //Crysta and Sam //. Weebly, n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2015.

Comments: Great answer, Micah. You really explained the differences well and thoroughly. Elaborative rehearsal is needed for long-term memory because it organizes the stimuli into something meaningful, whereas, maintenance rehearsal is good for rote memorization because it retains it in short term memory.

Citation https://www.brainscape.com/flashcards/979546/-What-is-the-difference-between-maintenance-rehearsal-and-elaborative-rehearsal%3F-