Elaborative

Elaborative is an adjective meaning characterized by elaboration or by a careful, detailed development of something. It derives from the Latin elaboratus, from elaborare “to work out, expand, or develop,” and is used to indicate that a thing has been made more complex, thorough, or richly described than a baseline version.

In psychology and education, elaborative describes processes and techniques that add meaning, connections, or detail to information. Elaborative processing involves linking new material to prior knowledge and generating associations, which generally supports deeper understanding and retention compared with shallow, surface-level processing. The term is often employed in contrast to more superficial approaches to learning or description.

Common usages in psychology include elaborative rehearsal, elaborative encoding, and elaborative interrogation. Elaborative rehearsal refers to adding meaning or associations to information to aid memory, while elaborative interrogation involves asking why a fact is true to promote explanatory connections. Elaborative encoding emphasizes constructing richer mental representations by integrating new information with existing knowledge.

In other contexts, elaborative can describe writing, design, or description that is rich in detail and context. An elaborative style, for instance, tends to include descriptive qualifiers, examples, and explanations that expand on a central claim. Overall, the term signals intentional depth and complexity beyond basic or minimal treatment.

See also: elaboration, elaborative interrogation, elaborative rehearsal, levels of processing.