ABSTRACT
This chapter considers variables such as time of day, emotional arousal, incentive, and meaningfulness, and other more usual laboratory variables that affect encoding. A number of learner variables can influence encoding, including the intention to learn, incentives to learn, arousal, and emotion. Encoding is affected by extensive preexisting knowledge, often summarized in the form of schemas. Schemas or scripts are ways of organizing general knowledge in semantic memory. However, encoding cannot be isolated from storage and retrieval factors. Most laboratory studies of encoding use episodic learning tasks such as free recall or recognition. Elaborative rehearsal is to memorize a phone number. Elaborative rehearsal produces more of an episodic memory, a recollection of having studied the material at a particular time and place. The idea of elaborative rehearsal is a central theme in this chapter: Alternatively, elaborative rehearsal may increase the distinctiveness of the memory.
