What is elaborative rehearsal?
Elaborative rehearsal involves thinking about the meaning of new information and relating it to what you already know. This creates more associations, making the memory trace richer and easier to retrieve. In contrast, maintenance rehearsal (simple repetition) keeps information in short-term memory but does not lead to strong long-term encoding.
Example: learning a new term
Suppose you need to learn the term 'hippocampus'. Maintenance rehearsal: you repeat 'hippocampus' over and over. Elaborative rehearsal: you think about its role in memory, relate it to a familiar concept like a 'memory hub', and visualize it. The latter creates a more durable memory.