Elaborative Rehearsal

Journal #3: Elaborative Rehearsal

Elaborative rehearsal is defined as "rehearsal that involves focusing on the meaning of information to help encode and transfer that information into long-term memory." make extensive use of elaborative rehearsal, for all manner of complex information. I remember one of the first times I really used elaborative rehearsal was for the preparation on an English literature exam in school.

The way that authors use allegories and other devices needs to be understood. For example, I remember trying to understand the meaning of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I related the story to the phrase "the cross one has to bear." This poem is an example of that imagery, which brings us back to the story of Jesus Christ. The entire poem then is more easily understood because of this allegory. But the best way for me to remember that particular meaning, out of all the works I studied that term, was to simply remember that one phrase. For each other work I studied, I also tried to use one key phrase that I felt encapsulated the message of the story. A book like Catcher in the Rye is easier to understand if I think of my friend who Holden Caulfield reminds me of.

The English literature course was one that I thought would be difficult. I had spent most of my schooling learning to memorize things, and the books and poems I studied in that class were too complex to memorize. Elaborative rehearsal allowed me to understand by relating characters to people I know; by relating the messages in the stories to popular phrases or axioms; and through other similar means. I found that these simple, easy-to-remember things, when accessed, then allowed me to recall all of the rest of the information I had stored about each work. I found I could remember an entire novel simply by remembering a nickname I could give a single character. Hockenbury and Hockenbury claim that elaborative rehearsal is more powerful for storing complex ideas into long-term memory. I did well on that exam, and continued to use those techniques for other exams, each of which I did well on. I seldom use maintenance rehearsal any more because it simply is not as effective.

Works Cited

Hockenbury