The theory of memory that emphasizes the degree to which new material is…

Concept — Theories of memory differ in what they treat as the variable that governs retention. The level-of-processing framework (Craik and Lockhart, 1972) holds that how well material is later remembered is a by-product of the depth of mental analysis performed on it at input: shallow structural processing (what the item looks like) and acoustic processing (what it sounds like) leave a fragile trace, whereas deep semantic processing — attending to meaning, associations and self-reference — leaves a durable one. Depth of analysis, not the store an item sits in, is the organising variable.

Application — The stem identifies the required theory by exactly one property: it “emphasizes the degree to which new material is mentally analyzed”. Degree of mental analysis is precisely what depth of processing means, so the theory the stem describes is the level-of-processing theory of memory.

Cross-check — Each of the other labels offered is organised around a different variable:

• Collective unconscious — Jung’s inherited, archetype-bearing layer of the psyche, a construct in personality theory rather than an account of how new material is encoded.

• Information — the information-processing (multi-store) account of memory, organised around stores (sensory register, short-term, long-term) and the transfer of material between them.

• Constructive process — Bartlett’s account of remembering as reconstruction from schemas, which explains distortion at recall rather than strength of encoding.

Because depth of analysis is the defining emphasis of the level-of-processing theory alone, that is the theory named in the stem.