Self-Generation and Memory

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the limiting conditions of self-generation and the theoretical accounts that these limitations have shaped. Extant theoretical accounts of generation imply an encoding trade-off, in which generation enhances item-specific processing at a cost to the encoding of inter item relations, order memory, and contextual associations. The chapter examines the effects of self-generation on memory as exemplified by the generation manipulation and the related perceptual interference manipulation. It begins by introducing the traditional view that self-generative encoding is advantageous. Although the chapter emphasizes null and negative effects of generation because of their theoretical import, it should not neglect to mention the substantial evidence in favor of this traditional view. Indeed, the positive effects of generation and perceptual interference on tests of item memory (such as recognition) are pervasive, typically large and nearly uniform across studies. In this regard, generative encoding certainly enhances memory. In sum, the trade-off accounts are a useful corrective to the traditional belief that self-generative encoding necessarily or generally enhances memory. These accounts have provided theoretical reasons for observed limitations of the generation effect and pointed in the direction of new limitations.