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A Subsumption Theory of
Meaningful Verbal Learning and
Retention
a
David P. Ausubel
a
Bureau of Educational Research , University of Illinois ,
USA
Published online: 06 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: David P. Ausubel (1962) A Subsumption Theory of Meaningful

Verbal Learning and Retention, The Journal of General Psychology, 66:2, 213-224, DOI:
10.1080/00221309.1962.9711837

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221309.1962.9711837

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 T'h c Journal of Grurra! P1ydwlogy, 1962, 66, 213-22+.

A SUHSUMPTION THEORY OF MEANINGFUL VERBAL

LEARNING AND RETENTION*
Bureau of Educational Research, Univusit)' of Illinois

Dxvm P. AvsuBEL

A. INTRODUCTION

In a previous paper ( 3), the writer distinguished between "reception"

and "discovery" learning on the basis of whether the content of the learning
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task ( i.e., what is to be learned) is presented to or independently dis•

covered by the learner. In verbal reception learning, presented material is
merely "internalized," i.e., made available ( functionally reproducible)
for future use. It was also maintained that reception learning is meaningful
provided that the learner adopts a set to relate the material to cognitive
structure;' and that the material itself is logically, i.e., non-arbitrarily,
relatable thereto. In other words, pupils do not independently have to
discover concepts or generalizations before they can understand or use
them meaningfully. Direct empirical and nonverbal contact with the data
on which verbal constructs are based is only necessary for meaningfulness
prior to junior high school age (8).
The aim of the present paper is to present a comprehensive theory of
cognitive organization and of long-term learning and retention of large
bodies of meaningful, verbally presented material. In the absence of such a
theory, inappropriate explanatory principles have been uncritically ex•
trapolated from experimental findings on nonverbal or on short-term, frag•
mentary, and rote verbal learning. As a result, not only have advances in
the efficient programming of verbal classroom learning been impeded, but
teachers have also been encouraged to perceive meaningful verbal materials
as rote in character and to persist in the use of rote teaching methods.
The scope of this theory is limited to the nature and conditions of meaning•
ful, verbal reception learning and forgetting. Hence it deals only with
problems of cognitive organization and interaction, i.e., with (a) systematic
changes in the availability and identifiability of presented ideational materials
as they interact with and are incorporated into existing cognitive structure,

• Received in the Editorial Office on July 21, 1960.

l By "cognitive structure" is simply meant a given individual's organization of
knowledge.
213
 214 JOURNAL OF GE�ERAL PSYCHOLOGY

and ( b) variables increasing or decreasing the incorporability of these

materials as well as their subsequent availability. It does not include less
complex kinds of learning such as classical or instrumental conditioning,
discrimination learning, and perceptual or motor skills learning, or such
other forms of cognitive activity as nonverbal, rote or discovery ( e.g.,
concept formation, thinking) learning. In the writer's opinion, entirely
different explanatory principles are required to account for these latter
types of learning. Also, although their importance is in no sense discounted,
no attention is paid to motivational, emotional, and attitudinal factors in
learning; to incentive and ·interpersonal conditions; to ego-involvement and
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personality variables : or to individual differences in cognitive capacity and

orientation to learning. Cognitive and noncognitive factors undoubtedly
influence the learning process concomitantly, and probably interact in various
ways; but for research purposes either set of factors can be systematically
varied while the other is held constant.

B. RESEARCH APPROACHES TO VERBAL RECEPTION LEARNING

The principles governing the nature and conditions of meaningful, verbal

reception learning can only be discovered through an applied or engineering
type of research that actually takes into account the distinctive attributes
of this phenomenon as it occurs in the classroom ( 1). We cannot merely
extrapolate general "basic science" laws derived from the laboratory study
of qualitatively different and vastly more simple. instances of learning ( 1).
Contrary to Spence's contention ( I 0, pp. 87-88), however, the greater
complexity and number of determining variables involved in meaningful
verbal learning does not rule out the possibility of discovering precise
quantitative laws with wide generality from one educational situation to
another. It simply means that such research demands experimental in•
genuity and sophisticated use of modern techniques of research design.
Experimental psychologists can hardly be criticized, however, if laboratory
studies of short-term, fragmentary and rote learning have had little ap•
plicability to the classroom. Like all pure research efforts in the basic
sciences, these studies were only designed to yield general laws of behavior
as ends in themselves, quite apart from any practical utility. The blame,
if any is to be assigned, must certainly lie with educational psychologists
who in general have failed to conduct the necessary applied research, and
have been content with extrapolating the findings of their experimental
colleagues.
Extrapolation, of course, offers several very attractive methodological
 DAVID P. AUSUBEL 215

advantages in verbal learning experiments. First, by using nonsense syllables

with equivalent Glaze values it is possible to work with additive units of
equal difficulty. Second, by using relatively meaningless learning tasks it
is possible to eliminate, for the most part, the indeterminable influence of
meaningful antecedent experience, which naturally varies from one individual
to another, But it is precisely this interaction of new learning tasks with
existing cognitive structure that is the distinctive feature of meaningful
learning. Hence, one cannot have one's cake and eat it too. If one chooses
the particular kind of methodological rigor associated with the use of rote
materials, one must also be satisfied with only applying the findings from
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such experiments to rote learning situations.

Unfortunately, however, the rote learning of lists of nonsense syllables
and arbitrarily paired adjectives is representative of few defensible learning
tasks in modern classrooms. It is also difficult to find supportive evidence
for Underwood's assertion that "much of our educational effort is devoted
to making relatively meaningless verbal units meaningful" ( 11, p. 111).
Brute memorization of representational equivalents ( e.g., lists of vocabulary
in foreign language study, the values of various constants in mathematics
and science) tends to form a very small portion of the curriculum, especially
beyond the elementary school years, once children have mastered the basic
letter and number symbols. Meaningful learning of verbally presented
materials constitutes the principal means of augmenting the learner's store
of knowledge, both within and outside the classroom. Hence, no research
program purporting to advance this objective can avoid coming to grips
with the fundamental variables involved in meaningful learning.

C. PROCESS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ROTE AND MEANINGFUL

RECEPTION LEARNING

Plausible reasons exist for believing that rotely and meaningfully learned
materials are organized much differently in consciousness and hence conform
to quite different principles of learning and forgetting. First, meaningfully
learned materials have been related to existing concepts in cognitive structure
in ways making possible the understanding of various kinds of significant
( e.g., derivative, descriptive, supportive) relationships ( 3). Most new
ideational materials that pupils encounter in a school setting are relatable
to a previously learned background of meaningful ideas and information. In
fact, the curriculum is deliberately organized in this fashion to provide for
the untraumatic introduction of new facts and concepts. Rotely learned
materials, on the other hand, are discrete and isolated entities which have
 216 JOURNAL OF GESERAL PSYCHOLOGY

not been related to established concepts in the learner's cognitive structure

( 3). ( Depending on their logical relatability to a particular learner's
cognitive structure, they may or may not be potentially meaningful to begin
with.) Second, because they are not anchored to existing ideational systems,
rotely learned materials ( unless greatly overlearned or endowed with
unusual vividness) are much more vulnerable to forgetting, i.e., have a much
shorter retention span.
The above differences between rote and meaningful learning categories
have important implications for the underlying kinds of learning and
retention processes involved in each category. Rotely lea med materials are
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essentially isolated from cognitive structure, and hence are primarly in•
fluenced by the interfering effects of similar rote materials learned im•
mediately before or after the learning task. Thus it is not unreasonable to
explain the learning and retention of discrete rote units in such stimulus•
response terms as intra- and inter-task similarity, response competition, and
stimulus or response generalization. The learning and retention of meaning•
ful materials, however, are primarily influenced by the attributes of relevant
subsuming concepts in cognitive structure with which they interact. Com•
pared to this extended interaction with established ideational components,
concurrent interfering effects have relatively little influence and explanatory
value ( 5, 6) .

D. THE SUBSUMPTION PROCESS IN LEARNING AND FORGETTING (5, 6)

The model of cognitive organization proposed for the learning and re•
tention of meaningful materials assumes the existence of a cognitive structure
that is hierarchically organized in terms of highly inclusive conceptual
traces2 under which are subsumed traces of less inclusive sub-concepts as
well as traces of specific informational data. The major organizational
principle, in other words, is that of progressive differentiation of trace
systems of a given sphere of knowledge from regions of greater to lesser
inclusiveness, each linked to the next higher step in the hierarchy through
a process of subsurnption, It is incorrect, however, to conceive of this mode
of organization as deductive in nature. The inductive-deductive issue is
only relevant in considering the method of acquiring or presenting generaliza•
tions and supportive data, and the sequential procedure adopted in problem-

2 The term, "trace" is used here simply as a hypothetical construct to account

for the continuing representation of past experience in the nervous system and
in present cognitive structure. No 'assumptions are made regarding the neuro•
physiological basis of the trace or regarding psychophysiological correlations.
 DAVID P. AUSUREL 217

solving. Irrespective of how they are acquired in the first place (inductively
or deductively), new materials are incorporated into total cognitive organiza•
tion in accordance with the same principle of progressive differentiation.
Thus, as new material enters the cognitive field, it interacts with and
is appropriately subsumed under a relevant and more inclusive conceptual
system. The very fact that ·it is subsumable ( relatable to stable elements in
cognitive structure) accounts for its meaningfulness and makes possible the
perception of insightful relationships. If it were not subsumable, it would
constitute rote material and form discrete and isolated traces.
The initial effects of subsumption, therefore, may be described as
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facilitation of both learning and retention. Only orienting, relational,

and cataloguing operations are involved at first. These preliminary opera•
tions are obviously essential for meaningful learning and retention, since the
incorporation of new material into existing cognitive structure necessarily
presupposes consistency with the prevailing principle of organization. Fur•
thermore, subsumption of the traces of the learning task by an established
ideational system provides anchorage for the new material, and thus con•
stitutes the most orderly, efficient and stable way of retaining it for future
availability, Hence, for a variable period of time, the recently catalogued
sub-concepts and informational data can be dissociated from their subsuming
concepts and are reproducible as individually identifiable entities.
Although the stability of meaningful material is initially enhanced by
anchorage to relevant conceptual foci in the learner's cognitive structure,
such material is gradually subjected to the erosive influence of the concep•
tualizing trend in cognitive organization. Because it is more economical and
less burdensome to retain a single inclusive concept than to remember a
large number of more specific items, the import of the latter tends to be
incorporated by the generalized meaning of the former. When this second
or obliterative stage of subsumption begins, the specific items become pro•
gressively less dissociable as entities in their own right until they are no
longer available and are said to be forgotten.
This process of memorial reduction to the least common denominator cap•
able of representing cumulative prior experience is very similar to the
reduction process characterizing concept formation. A single abstract con•
cept is more manipulable for cognitive purposes than the dozen diverse in•
stances from which its commonality is abstracted; and similarly, the
memorial residue of ideational experience is also more functional for future
learning and problem-solving occasions when stripped of its tangential
modifiers, particularized connotations, and less clear and discriminable im-
 218 JOL' R'.\' AL OF CE'- ERAL PSYC HOLOt:Y

plications. Hence, barring repetition or some other special reason [e.g ..

primacy, uniqueness, enhanced discriminability, or the availability of a
specially relevant and stable subsumer ( see below)] for the perpetuation
of dissociability, specific items of meaningful experience that are supportive
of or correlative to an established conceptual entity tend gradually to under•
go obliterative subsumption.

E. LEARNING vsssus FoRGETTl'('G

In reception ( as contrasted to discovery) learning, the distinctive at•

tribute of both learning and forgetting is a change ·in the availability or
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future reproducibility of the learning material ( 3). Learning represent- an

increment in availability (i.e., the situation prevailing after initial exposure
to or repetition of the material), whereas forgetting represents a decrement
in availability ( i.e. the situation prevailing after a single exposure of between
two exposures of the material). Retention, therefore, is largely a later
temporal phase and diminished aspect of the same phenomenon or functional
capacity ( the availability of ·internalized material) involved in learning
itself. Later availability is obviously a function of initial availability. In
the absence of intervening practice, therefore, delayed retention cannot pos•
sibly surpass immediate retention. The common phenomenon of reminiscence
reflects either the operation of a drive state temporarily lowering thresholds
of availability at a later testing of retention (2), or the subsequent release
( disinhibition ) of transitory inhibitory conditions ( e.g., repression; initial
confusion after presentation of new material) operative immediately after
learning.
The relationship between meaningful learning and forgetting is even
closer than that already indicated for reception learning generally. Meaning•
ful retention is not only a later attenuated manifestation of the same availa•
bility function established during learning, but is also a later temporal phase
of the same interactional process underlying this availability. During the
learning phase, new ideational material forms an interactional product with
a subsuming focus in cognitive structure, and depending on various factors
( see below), has a given degree of dissociability therefrom. Continued
interaction results in a gradual decrease in the dissociability of the new
material ( i.e., in forgetting) until the interactional product is reduced to
a least common denominator capable of representing the entire complex,
namely, to the subsuming concept itself. The same cognitive factors3

3 Such motivational variables as d r i ve, reinforcement and intention may influence

learning without influencing retention ( �).
 DAVID P. AUSUBEL 219

determining the original degree of dissociability at the time of learning

( initial interaction) also determine the rate at which dissociability is
subsequently lost during retention ( later interaction). In rote learning,
on the other hand, cognitive interaction, by definition, does not take place.
Hence, rote learning represents an increment in availability involving one
discrete cognitive process and set of variables, and rote forgetting represents
a loss in this availability due to interference from another discrete process
( and group of variables) set in motion shortly before or after learning.

F. PRINCIPAL VARIABLES INFLUENCING MEANINGFUL VERBAL LEARNING4

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One important variable affecting the incorporability and longevity of

new meaningful material is the availability in cognitive structure of relevant
subsuming concepts at an appropriately proximate level of inclusiveness to
provide optimal anchorage. If appropriately relevant and proximate sub•
sumers are not present, the learner tends to utilize the most relevant and
proximate ones that arc available. But since the latter subsumers do not
provide optimal anchorage, and since it is highly unlikely that the most
relevant and proximate subsuming concepts are typically available to learners
in most learning situations, it would seem desirable to introduce the ap•
propriate subsumers and make them part of cognitive structure prior to the
actual presentation of the learning task. The introduced subsumers would
thus constitute efficient advance "organizers" or anchoring foci for the recep•
tion of new material.
A second important factor presumably affecting the retention of a meaning•
ful learning task is the extent to which it is discriminable from the established
conceptual systems that subsume it. A reasonable assumption here, borne
out by preliminary investigation ( 6), would be that if the distinguishing
features of the new learning material were not originally salient and clearly
discriminable from stable subsuming foci, they could be adequately rep•
resented by the latter for memorial purposes, and would not persist as
dissociable entities identifiable in their own right. In other words, only
discriminable categorical variants of more inclusive concepts would have
long-term retention value. The discriminability of new materials could be
enhanced by repetition or by explicitly pointing out similarities and dif•
ferences between them and their presumed subsumers in cognitive structure.
Lastly, the longevity of new meaningful. material in memory has been

4 Two preliminary studies (5, 6) concerned with some of these variables have
already been reported. More definitive invettigation is currently in progreu H
part of a long-term research program in meaningful verbal learning.
 220 JOl.:R:-AL OF CE:- ER.-\L PSYCHOLOGY

shown to be a function of the stability and clarity of its subsumers ( 6).

Ambiguous and unstable subsumers not only provide weak anchorage for
related new materials, but also cannot easily be discriminated from them.
Factors probably influencing the clarity and stability of subsuming concepts
include repetition, their relative age, the use of exemplars, and multi-con•
textual exposure.

G. SussUMPTION THEORY VERSUS CoNNECTIONISM

Connectionisrn has little difficulty in explaining rote verbal learning and

forgetting. The learning of discrete verbal units isolated from cognitive
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structure can be conceived of quite plausibly in terms of habit strength; and

forgetting can be similarly conceptualized in stimulus-response terms as
reflective of interference with established habit strength through such
mechanisms as response competition and stimulus or response generalization.
Hence, the principal variable in rote forgetting is exposure to materials
similar to but not identical with the learning task, shortly before ( proactive
inhibition) or after ( retroactive inhibition) the learning session. When
learning material is meaningful (i.e., interacts with subsuming concepts
in cognitive structure), however, it seems more credible to define learning
and forgetting in terms of the dissociability of the material from its
subsumers at successive stages in the interactional process. In relation to this
theoretical frame of reference, the major variables affecting retention are
the availability of appropriate subsuming concepts in cognitive structure, the
stability and clarity of these concepts, and the discriminability of the learning
material from its subsumers.
The inapplicability of connectionist principles of proactive and retroactive
interference to meaningful verbal materials becomes evident when we use
such materials in experimental studies of retention. For example, explicit
study of a long passage about Christianity, immediately before or after
the learning of a comparable passage about Buddhism, does not significantly
impair the irnmediatc or delayed Buddhism retention scores of college
students in comparison with those of matched control subjects not exposed
to the Christianity material ( 5, 6). The short-term interference of similar
elements, so crucial in rote forgetting, becomes relatively insignificant when
meaningful materials are anchored to established subsuming concepts and pro•
gressively interact with them to the point of obliterative subsumption. Under
these conditions the discriminability of the Buddhism material, and the clarity
of the learner's knowledge of Christianity are the significant determining
variables ( 6). The same studies also showed that retroactive exposure to
 DAVID P. AUSUBEL 221

material with the same ideational import as the learning passage, but differing
in specific content, sequence, and mode of presentation, not only has no
inhibitory effect on retention, but is just as facilitating as repetition of the
learning passage ( 5). Meaningful ( unlike rote) verbal materials obviously
have a general substantive content that is transferable or independent of
specific verbatim form and sequence.

H. SussuMPTION VERSUS GESTALT THEORY

Subsumption and Gestalt5 theories have two points in common which set
them apart from connectionism. Both conceive of forgetting, in whole or
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part, as an assimilative rather than as an interference process, and both em•

ploy the concept of "trace" instead of such constructs as "habit strength"
and "response tendency." These resemblances, however, are more terminologi•
cal than substantive. The Gestalt concept of "replacement" merely
describes assimilation as an end-result of cognitive activity without ex•
plaining how or why it occurs. Subsumption theory also only uses the
term "trace" to refer to the continuing representation of past experience
in the nervous system and in cognitive structure; the Gestalt assumptions
regarding isomorphism and intra-trace dynamics are not accepted. Stripped
of these latter connotations, it is felt that such terms as "trace" and
"availability" describe more appropriately the memorial residue of ideas
and information than such far-fetched behavioristic terms as "response
tendency" and "habit strength."
Subsumption theory also differs from Gestalt theory in the following
additional ways: (a) It attributes all forgetting to trace interaction, and
denies that autonomous disintegration of traces occurs as a result of the
resolution of perceptually derived intra-trace tensions. Asymmetrical figures,
for example, would sometimes be remembered as more symmetrical than
originally perceived, not because of any autonomous changes within the
traces, but because they were subsumed by and eventually reduced to a
memorial residue of familiar geometrical concepts in cognitive structure.
( b) It conceives of assimilation (loss of identifiability or decreased dissocia•
bility of newly learned materials) as a progressive phenomenon rather than
as an all-or-none type of replacement in which reproducibility is lost com•
pletely and instantaneously. An ideational element and its subsuming con•
cept interact and set up an equilibrium process defining the dissociability of
the former from the latter at any given point in time. The direction of this

5 Based on Chapter 10 in Koffka (9).

 222 JOURNAL OF GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY

equilibrium then gradually shifts to the undissociable form of the inter•

actional product which is its natural end-point. ( c) Thus, assimilation is
not conceived of as simple replacement of one trace by another, but as the
outcome of a conceptualizing trend in memorial reduction. As a result of this
trend, a highly inclusive and established trace system comes to represent the
import of less generalized traces, the identifiability of which is correspondingly
obliterated. (d) A meaningful ideational element is believed to be as•
similated by a more inclusive trace system, not because of similarity between
them per se, but because it is not sufficiently discriminable from the latter.
Hence its import can be adequately represented by the generality of the
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more inclusive system. Similarity, of course, helps determine which of a

number of potential subsuming concepts in cognitive structure actually plays
the subsuming role, and is also one of the determinants of discriminability.
A high degree of similarity can facilitate initial anchorage without leading
rapidly to obliterative subsumption, provided that differences are also
clearly and explicitly perceptible. ( e) Forgetting is regarded as a continua•
tion of the same interactional process established at the moment of learning.
According to Gestalt assimilation theory, a trace is first established in
unattached form at the time of learning, and then interacts with and is
later replaced by another similar and separately established trace.
Subsumption theory also has elements in common with Bartlett's views
( 7) of cognitive functioning generally and of remembering in particular.
His concept of schema as an organizing attitude or affect resulting from the
abstraction and articulation of past experience-although somewhat vague
with respect to both nature and mode of operation-is structurally and
functionally more closely related to "subsuming foci" than to the Gestalt
concept of "trace"; but, probably because his learning tasks were concerned
with narrative events rather than with the substance of impersonal ideas,
attitudinal and affective attributes of schemata play a more important
determinative role than cognitive variables in his theories of perception and
memory, In accounting for the discrepancy between presented and re•
membered content, Bartlett emphasizes both the influence of idiosyncratic
schemata on original perception of the material, and a process of "imaginative
reconstruction" at the time of recall as a result of which particular content
is selected and invented in accordance with the nature and demands of the
current situation (7, p. 213). Subsumption theory, on the other hand,
attributes most of the change between presentation and recall to an inter•
vening interactional process in cognitive structure. Thus, although the
individual in remembering undoubtedly selects from what is available in
 OA\'ID I'. ,\L'Sl'REI, 223
memory, and also adds some new material suitable for the occasion, he is
actually reproducing, for the most part, materials that have undergone
memorial reduction rather than reconstructing the residue of original per•
ception.
I. SUMMARY A1'D CONCLUSIONS

Meaningfully and rotely learned materials are learned and retained in

qualitatively different ways because meaningful learning tasks are, by defi•
nition, relatable and anchorable to relevant and more inclusive concepts
in cognitive structure. Hence, it is postulated that the learning and retention
of meaningfully presented materials are primarily influenced by the attributes
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of these latter concepts with which they interact and by the nature of the
interactional process. Rotely learned materials, on the other hand, are
isolated from cognitive structure and arc primarily influenced by the inter•
fering effects of similar rote materials.
As meaningful new material enters the cognitive field, it interacts with
and is appropriately subsumed under a relevant and more inclusive conceptual
system. This initial anchoring process facilitates retention. Gradually,
however, because of the conceptualizing trend in cognitive organization,
the import of the new material becomes incorporated by the more generalized
meaning of its suhsumer, and is no longer dissociable from it. It ceases
being available as an individually identifiable entity in its own right, and is
said to be "forgotten." Forgetting is thus a continuation or later temporal
phase of the same interactional process underlying the availability established
during learning.
According to this theory, the principal variables influencing the incor•
porability and longevity of meaningful material are (a) the availability in
cognitive structure of relevant subsuming concepts at an appropriate level
of inclusiveness; (b) the stability and clarity of these concepts; and (c) their
discriminability from the learning task. Research on the effect of these vari•
ables on classroom learning has obvious pedagogic implications and is urgently
needed. Extrapolation of findings from studies of rote learning has not only
held back the improvement of verbal instruction, but has also encouraged
teachers to present meaningful materials in rote fashion.

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