THE EFFECTS OF DATA-DRIVEN AND CONCEPTUALLY DRIVEN GENERATION OF STUDY ITEMS ON DIRECT AND INDIRECT MEASURES OF MEMORY

Two experiments are reported which investigated the effects of data-dr iven generation of study items on direct and indirect measures of memo ry. Previous research in the field of implicit memory has traditionall y employed generation procedures at encoding which focused on conceptu ally driven processing. The present study undertook to devise data-dri ven generation procedures that were predicted to lead to a generation effect on word-stem completion. In Experiment 1 subjects had to genera te target items from anagrams and newly developed ''assemblograms'', r equiring mainly data-driven processing, as well as from semantic cues and definitions, involving mainly conceptually driven processing. Effe cts of these generate conditions were compared to the usual name condi tion on a direct word-stem cued recall test, and on an indirect word-s tem completion test. Differences between data-driven generation on the stem completion task and the name condition failed to reach significa nt differences in retention. In Experiment 2 subjects generated target s from assemblograms and from semantic cues. The data revealed the pre dicted occurrence of a generation effect on an indirect memory test fo llowing data-driven generation. The finding of a generation effect in an indirect as opposed to a direct memory test was seen as support for the view that generating a study item may enhance data-driven as well as conceptually driven processing, depending on the processing demand s made by generation procedures. The results were interpreted within t he transfer-appropriate processing framework, with additional referenc e to Glisky and Rabinowitz's two-component account of generation effec ts (Glisky and Rabinowitz, 1985).