Cognitive Operations and the Generation Effect

The present experiments were designed to test a cognitive operations hypothesis of the generation effect, or memorial advantage for stimuli that are generated rather than simply read. In two experiments two aspects of generation were manipulated independently: (a) whether the to-be-remembered stimulus was absent (and therefore produced by the subject) or present (and therefore not produced) and (b) whether the relevant cognitive operations were performed by the subject or were instead performed by another agent. Specifically, subjects were given simple multiplication problems with the answers either absent or present in the original problems and with the calculations performed either by themselves or by another agent (either the experimenter or a calculator). The first experiment tested immediate recall of the answers, and the second experiment tested both recall and recognition of the answers after retention intervals up to a week. In all cases, a highly significant retention advantage was found for the tasks requiring multiplication operations by the subjects themselves as opposed to another agent, but there was no main effect for whether the answer was absent or present in the original problem. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results with respect to the generation effect as well as the practical implications with respect to using a calculator in learning the multiplication facts.