Effects of levels of processing and disciplinary differences in recall memory

Abstract

This study re-examined the hypothesis that deep processing results in higher performance in recall tasks and investigated whether disciplinary differences exists in recall memory. Undergraduate students (N=128; Males = 64, Females = 64) of 4 faculties in University of Nigeria, Nsukka were given a memory prose and their performance on recall task was tested. ANOVA results showed that there was no significant difference in the performance scores of students in the various academic disciplines on the memory test, however the effect size for disciplinary differences was .06, indicating that 6% of the variance in recall was explained by differences in academic discipline. Participants in deep processing condition had superior performance on recall than those in shallow processing condition, F (1,120) = 37.17, p< .001. The effect size of .24 indicated that about 24% of the variance in recall was explained on account of levels of processing. The interaction effect of levels of processing and academic discipline on recall memory was not significant. Findings were discussed on the basis of levels of processing framework and the generic nature of common university courses.