Maintenance rehearsal

Maintenance rehearsal is an aspect of memory encoding and is a shallow form of processing information which involves focusing on an object without thought to its meaning or its association with other objects. For example the repetition of a series of numbers is a form of maintenance rehearsal. In contrast, elaborative rehearsal is a deep form of processing information and involves 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.

Maintenance rehearsal has been demonstrated to be important in learning but its effects can only be demonstrated using indirect methods such as lexical decision tasks, and word stem completion which are used to assess implicit learning. In general, however previous learning by maintenance rehearsal is not apparent when memory is being tested directly or explicitly with questions like “ Is this the word you were shown earlier?”