Dr. Ellis is contrasting the depth-of-processing and encoding-specificity hypotheses. In her experiment, two groups of participants study a word list in a psychology laboratory. Participants in group I determine whether each word is a synonym of a target word; those in group II determine whether each word rhymes with a target word. Some time later, half the participants in each group try to recall the list given sound-focused cues; the other half try to recall the list given meaning-focused cues. Participants given meaning-focused retrieval cues outperform those given sound-focused cues, regardless of the task they performed when they learned the list. What does this result say with respect to the depth-of-processing and encoding-specificity hypotheses?
A) It supports the encoding-specificity hypothesis.
B) It supports the depth-of-processing hypothesis.
C) It contradicts both hypotheses.
D) It is uninformative with respect to these hypotheses.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The result supports the depth-of-processing hypothesis because it suggests that deeper, semantic processing (meaning-focused) leads to better recall than shallower, phonetic processing (sound-focused), regardless of the type of cue provided. This is consistent with the depth-of-processing theory, which posits that the level of cognitive processing affects memory recall.

Dr Ellis Is Contrasting the Depth-Of-Processing and Encoding-Specificity Hypotheses