EVALUATING THE QUALITY AND IMPACT OF MEDIATORS FOR LEARNING WHEN USING ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY STRATEGIES

Recently, a series of studies has reported much greater recall for fac tual information when students were asked to generate elaborations in response to 'why' questions (elaborative interrogation) relative to st udying provided elaborations. The two experiments reported here extend and clarify research regarding the strategic benefits of generating e laborations versus providing elaborations. In both experiments, underg raduates studied 30 sentences, all of which described one particular m an doing one activity. Students used one of three study strategies. In two conditions, students studied provided elaborations (PE). Half of the elaborations explained why the particular man engaged in the parti cular activity and half did not explain the specific relations. In the remaining condition, students generated their own elaborations. In bo th experiments, students were provided with their generated/provided e laborations as cues for recalling the fact at testing. When students w ere not explicitly cued to use the generated/provided elaboration at r ecall, elaborative interrogation (EI) consistently outperformed the PE condition. Recall in the EI condition did not exceed recall in the PE condition, however, when students were provided with good explanatory elaborations and were cued with them at testing. These experiments de monstrate that the poorer performance associated with providing relati ve to generating elaborations can be mediated by encouraging more mean ingful processing of materials and prompting students to access their mediators at recall.