If you're thinking about your plans for the weekend while you are reading your psychology textbook, the reason you will probably forget most of what you read is that you've used ____ encoding, which is inferior to ____ encoding for retention of verbal material.
A) phonemic; semantic
B) semantic; reconstructive
C) phonemic; proactive
D) proactive; semantic

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Phonemic encoding involves processing the sound of the words, while semantic encoding involves processing the meaning of the words. Semantic encoding has been found to be superior to phonemic encoding for retention of verbal material. Therefore, if you are thinking about your weekend plans instead of focusing on the meaning of the text, you are using inferior phonemic encoding, which will make it more difficult to retain the information.

If You're Thinking About Your Plans for the Weekend While