Elaborative rehearsal

Elaborative rehearsal (or relational rehearsal) is an aspect of memory encoding and is an associative process, a deep form of processing information that needs remembering by  establishing associations by thought of the object's meaning as well as making connections between the object, past experiences and the other objects of focus.

Using the example of numbers, one might associate them with dates that are personally significant such as your parents’ birthdays (past experiences) or perhaps you might see a pattern in the numbers that helps you to remember them.

Other strategies include develloping associations on the basis of categorization, the use of mnemonics

Due to the deeper level of processing that occurs with elaborative rehearsal it is more effective than maintenance rehearsal in creating new memories. This has been demonstrated in people’s lack of knowledge of the details in everyday objects. For example, in one study where Americans were asked about the orientation of the face on their country’s penny few recalled this with any degree of certainty. Despite the fact that it is a detail that is often seen, it is not remembered as there is no need to because the color discriminates the penny from other coins. The ineffectiveness of maintenance rehearsal, simply being repeatedly exposed to an item, in creating memories has also been found in people’s lack of memory for the layout of the digits 0-9 on calculators and telephones.