| Self-generated material is better remembered than information that is simply read,or otherwise not generated by the self.This generation effect has been robust for item memory(i.e.,the content of information)across many different experiments,but inconsistent for context memory(e.g.,memory for the extraneous details of information,such as item color/font or location).In three experiments,we tried to find out how generation influences item memory and context memory respectively.Results of Exp.1&Exp.2 showed that participants consistently had better item memory in generation condition than in read condition;but generation could either disrupt(for a Chinese word antonym generation task)or enhance memory for intrinsic context(for a Chinese category words generation task).Exp.3 suggested that generation may have no effect on memory for extrinsic context.Overall,these experiments indicate that despite enhancing item memory,generation may enhance memory for intrinsic context in some instances and disrupt it in other instances,but has no effect on memory for extrinsic context.According to the multifactor processing hypothesis,these diversified effects of generation on memory is due to two crucial factors,that is,generation encoding set and item representation of content and context. |
