Maintenance and Elaborative Rehearsal
Maintenance Rehearsal, also known as Rote Rehearsal, is the process of repeatedly saying or thinking about a piece of information. This process is used to help memorize information in order to keep it in our working memory for a long duration of time, though this is truly never the case. Through this procedure, once the repeating stops, the information quickly goes away. This rehearsal only temporarily maintains the information in our memory for our Short-Term Memory is known to only hold about 7 pieces of information for about 12 to 30 seconds. Maintenance Rehearsal is not quite the best technique to use in order to store memory, but this process is still used regularly by millions of people.
Elaborative Rehearsal is a technique which makes memorizing information meaningful. Unlike Maintenance Rehearsal, this process is not about repeating words and thoughts over and over again, but instead involves thinking about the meaning of the term to be remembered. To make this happen, one must relate the information to prior knowledge, make the information personally meaningful, which then leads to a much stronger Long-Term Memory. By making personal connections to words and terms, it will make it much easier to store this memory for a longer period of time, resulting in this information to be permanently kept in Long-Term Memory.
A personal experience I have in which relates to Maintenance and Elaborative Rehearsal is when I was studying for a vocabulary test in my AP Spanish class in high school. I did not study for the test the night before because I thought I would easily be able to study for it within the first 10 minutes of class. Once I arrived to class, I immediately started studying the vocab words. I kept repeating the words and their meanings in my head over and over again until I thought I got it down. I was also repeating the terms with my friends so that we could help each other study. Once it was time to take the test, my teacher handed out the papers from the opposite side of the room from me, this meaning I was the last one to receive my test. Since almost a minute went by after repeating the words in my head, I could only truly remember the first few words on the vocab sheet.
Maintenance Rehearsal played a role within my situation because I was constantly repeating the vocab words over and over again to myself, thinking that it was helpful and that I would remember them for my test. Though they only stayed within my Short-Term Memory for about 30 seconds, and then quickly left my memory. Elaborative Rehearsal should have been put into play when I was studying because it would have helped me retain the words for a longer period of time. If I made connections with the words and some of my personal life situations, then the vocab words would have been moved in my Long-Term Memory, which would have helped me remember all of the vocab words and do better on the test.
References: Wede, J. (n.d.). Psychology.
https://edu.glogster.com/glog/exp3604-c-memory-assignment/1wvencc641i
Hi, I really enjoyed your post because I also have done “cramming before vocab test” 10 minutes before my French class so many class back when I was in high school. And, of course, that method of simple memorization did not work because it is simply putting information in short term memory without any elaborate rehearsals.
While I was reading your post, I realized the true intention of this blog post activity for psych 100. When we work on posts, we try to go back in time and recall what we learned in the specific lecture. By doing so, we are rehearsing the material in a deeper sense. In addition, we try to connect the concept we learned to our own experiences which is the most common example of elaborative rehersal. Moreover, reading other people’s experience let us relate to ourself as well. Connecting those events and experiences makes it a lot easier for our brain to store the information in the long term memory system.