Performance Approach, Performance and Depth

¶ … Performance Approach, Performance and Depth f Information Processing: A fresh look at relations between student's academic motivation and cognition," explains the parallel between various motivational states and the level of cognitive processing in an individual. The authors believe that if an individual is in a specific motivational state, that individual's cognitive processing and attention development will be affected by that state. Researchers involved in this study allocated three different groups of students three different motivational states, as well as one control group with only instructions to complete a task with no motivational influence. Researchers used performance avoidance, or one doing well to not be singled out as the worst; performance avoidance, or one performing well as a way to outperform all possible competitors; and a mastery goal approach, which represents an attempt to well to simply master the material. Using variance ANOVA, researchers found that cognitive processing is affected by motivational states. Students influenced into a performance avoidance or performance approach showed proficiency in deeper levels of recall than the mastery or control groups.

Researchers who published "Levels of Processing: A Framework for Memory Research" believed that the memory trace is a conclusion of a complex perceptional analysis of various stimuli. As a stimulus is processed and then analyzed, that stimulus is coded into a memory trace. The more that particular stimulus is processed, the stronger and more persistent the trace becomes. Research shows that individuals perceive stimuli at a deeper and more meaningful level than before a logical analysis of stimuli can be produced. These meaningful perceptions will also be retained more than the less meaningful types of stimuli. Results of various studies show that the deeper in meaning a stimulus is, the higher the level of processing is used to analyze it. The deeper the connection, it is forgotten at a much slower rate than meaningless stimuli. By making stimuli more meaningful, the strength and persistence of the memory trace will increase.

In the study published in "Neuroanatomical correlates of encoding in episodic memory: Levels of processing effect," Researchers believe that meaningful stimuli are better remembered than less meaningful stimuli. Researchers conducted an experiment in which twelve individuals were asked to remember a series of nouns. One group was asked to detect the letter "a" in a series of nouns. The other group was asked to label the various nouns as living or non-living. The authors concluded that the group which was told to allocate a living or non-living label to the various nouns had a much success in the recall rates than the group told to look for the letter "a," which held much less meaning in the minds of the individuals. Analysis of brain imagery also shows increased brain activity in the minds of those individuals asked to denote the nouns as living or non-living. This activity was located within the left inferior prefrontal cortex.