Production improves memory equivalently following elaborative vs non-elaborative processing

Abstract

Words that are read aloud are better remembered than those read silently. Recent research has suggested that, rather than reflecting a benefit for produced items, this production effect may reflect a cost to reading silently in a list containing both aloud and silent items (Bodner, Taikh, & Fawcett, 2013). This cost is argued to occur because silent items are lazily read, receiving less attention than aloud items which require an overt response. We examined the possible role of lazy reading in the production effect by testing whether the effect would be reduced under elaborative encoding, which precludes lazy reading of silent items. Contrary to a lazy reading account, we found that production benefited generated words as much as read words (Experiment 1) and deeply imagined words as much as shallowly imagined words (Experiment 2). We conclude that production stands out as equally distinct—and consequently as equally memorable—regardless of whether it accompanies deep or shallow processing, evidence that is inconsistent with a lazy reading account.

Keywords:

• Production effect
• Distinctiveness
• Elaborative encoding

This research was supported by Discovery Grant A7459 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Sukhdip Grewal for her assistance in collecting the data.

This research was supported by Discovery Grant A7459 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Sukhdip Grewal for her assistance in collecting the data.

Notes

¹ Distinctiveness has been claimed to be the mechanism underlying several other mnemonics, including enactment (e.g., Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1997), generation (e.g., Begg & Snider, 1987), and bizarreness (e.g., McDaniel & Einstein, 1986). Notably, like the production effect, these other encoding techniques produce memory benefits mainly in a mixed-list design (McDaniel & Bugg, 2008), although sometimes also in a between-participants design.

² Dodson and Schacter (2001) found that participants used this “distinctiveness heuristic” for speech to correctly reject silent lures on a recognition test, resulting in lower false alarm rates. Here, and in our previous research, we show that this same heuristic can increase hit rates for aloud items.

³ We assume that participants had a similar failure rate in the generate silent condition, although it was not possible to unobtrusively keep track of generation failures in this condition. Removing failed generations from the data did not change the pattern of results.