THE EFFECTS OR VISUAL MASKING ON RECOGNITION - SIMILARITIES TO THE GENERATION EFFECT

Previous research has shown that stimuli that are masked during encodi ng are remembered better than stimuli that are unmasked (Nairne, 1988) . Four experiments were conducted that demonstrate several Limitations to this effect. A recognition advantage for masked items over unmaske d items was not found when the stimuli were unfamiliar low-frequency w ords and nonwords. A recognition advantage was also not found when the encoding task discouraged a cursory reading of the unmasked items and when masking was manipulated as a between-subjects variable. These bo undary conditions resemble ones found in previous studies of the gener ation effect. (C) 1997 Academic Press.