The Item-Order Distinction and the Generation Effect: The Importance of Order Information in Long-Term Memory

Abstract

The item-order distinction has been useful in explaining memory dissociations in short-term retention tasks. It generally has been assumed that serial order information is beneficial to long-term retention as well, although the distinction has received little empirical attention. Recently, it was shown that generating items at input, rather than simply reading them, hinders processing of serial order information. This reduction in order processing has been implicated in the lack of generation effects in between-list designs. Experiment 1, using typical generation effect procedures, showed that generation inhibited order reconstruction performance. Experiment 2 showed that order reconstruction was hindered even when categorically related lists were used. Experiment 3 demonstrated that generation inhibited order reconstruction in an incidental learning procedure. The results suggest that order processing is relatively automatic and that generation constantly inhibits it. The results support the view that the item-order distinction may be a powerful explanatory tool in long-term memory research.