THE GREATER MEMORABILITY OF SELF-GENERATED VERSUS EXTERNALLY PRESENTED PRODUCT INFORMATION

Previous research based on the ''generation effect'' (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) seems to suggest that when subjects are allowed to do more acti ve thinking on their own in order to generate a response to an experim ental stimulus (self-generated information), memory performance is oft en better than when all the answers or solutions to the stimulus quest ion are presented to them (externally presented information). In the p resent study, it was demonstrated that potent generation effects can o ccur in the context of a single advertising appeal. The results also c onfirm that the existence of an elaborate semantic network (i.e., prio r knowledge) for a given product category can be an important factor i n facilitating the generation effect. Implications for memory theories and directions for future research are discussed. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.