Influential psychologists Craik and Lockhart laid the groundwork for research focused on self-referential encoding and memory. In 1972 they proposed their Depth of Processing framework which suggests that memory retention depends on how the stimulus material was encoded in memory.Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-XKlein, S. B., & Kihlstrom, J. F. (1986). Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115(1), 26–38. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.115.1.26 Their original research considered structural, phonemic, and semantic encoding tasks, and showed that semantic encoding is the best method to aid in recall. They asked participants to rate 40 descriptive adjectives on one of four tasks; Structural (Big font or small font?), Phonemic (Rhymes with xxx?), Semantic (Means same as xxx?), or Self-reference (Describes you?). This was then followed by an "incidental recall task". This is where participants are asked, without prior warning, to recall as many of the words they had seen as possible within a given time limit. Craik and Tulving's original experiment showed that structural and phonemic tasks lead only to "shallow" encoding, while the semantic tasks lead to "deep" encoding and resulted in better recall.Craik F., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 268–94.
