Effects of generation on source memory: A test of the resource tradeoff versus processing hypothesis

Abstract

Generation usually enhances item memory and this effect manifests itself across a variety of encoding conditions. However, the influence of generation on context memory is most often negative and it seems to be sensitive to the kind and difficulty of the generation task, as well as the type of contextual details. In four experiments, the predictions from Mulligan's (2004) processing account were contrasted with the general resource tradeoff hypothesis. The results consistently indicated that an increase in generation difficulty leads to worse memory for context. However, when read items were compared with easy to generate items, the results resembled those predicted by the processing account. It seems that both the cognitive effort and the kind of processing promoted by the encoding task influence memory for context.

Keywords:

• Context memory
• Encoding
• Generation effect
• Multinomial models
• Source monitoring

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Arndt Bröder, Neil Mulligan, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

¹Differential source-guessing tendencies for recognised and unrecognised items are somewhat unexpected findings, but such findings are sometimes reported in the literature (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & von Hecker, 2007).

²When all restrictions on response bias and guessing parameters b, a, g, were relaxed (as in Experiment 1), the pattern of results concerning source memory did not change.

³When all restrictions on response bias and guessing parameters b, a, g, were relaxed (as in Experiment 1), source memory for easy to generate items was still greater than for difficult to generate items, but on a trend level, ΔG ²(1) = 3.67, p=.05.