Does the Generation Effect Depend upon Selective Displaced Rehearsal?

Abstract

The selective displaced rehearsal interpretation of the generation effect (Slamecka & Katsaiti, 1987) suggests that subjects allocate more rehearsal time to generated items than to read items. We conducted four experiments to test this hypothesis. The first two experiments examined the number of times subjects rehearsed read and generate items. Free recall results yielded generation effects, but there were no corresponding significant differences in the number of rehearsals given to read and generate items. Generation effects were also obtained in Experiments 3 (incidental memorization) and 4 (intentional memorization), despite disruption of rehearsal after each target item by a Brown-Peterson task