Production as a distinctive contextual cue for retrieving intentionally forgotten information.

Abstract

The production effect-the memory benefit for information studied aloud as opposed to silently-has been credited to the distinctive processing of the aloud information. Could the production effect be characterized more broadly as a context-based memory effect? At encoding, the distinctive "aloud" information could create a global contextual cue that becomes associated with only the produced information. This cue could then be elicited at retrieval to facilitate memory for the produced information. To test this idea, a mixed-list production effect manipulation was combined with a list-method directed forgetting procedure. According to the contextual change account of list-method directed forgetting, when the first of two lists is to be forgotten, that list is poorly remembered later due to the mental context change between the lists, which causes the context of the second list to better match the test context. Reinstating the relevant contextual cues, therefore, improves memory for the to-be-forgotten list. Our results showed that reading aloud did indeed function as contextual information: Reactivating this production information at retrieval enhanced memory only for aloud items-and not for silent items-from the to-be-forgotten list. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).