INCONGRUOUS ITEM GENERATION EFFECTS - A MULTIPLE-CUE PERSPECTIVE

In a series of studies, generation effects were obtained under encodin g conditions designed to induce incongruous, unrelated item generation . Experiments 1 and 2, using free- and cued-recall measures, respectiv ely, provided evidence that this unrelated generation effect was due t o response-specific processing. Experiment 3 demonstrated a lack of re lation between free recall and indices of clustering. A preliminary pr otocol study suggested that Ss generate multiple items in their search for appropriate unrelated responses. In Experiments 4 and 5, conditio ns designed to produce more extensive multiple generations demonstrate d enhanced free recall. These results supported a multiple-cue account of facilitated recall for incongruous item generation. The multiple-c ue perspective is consistent with traditional conceptualizations of me mory, such as the principle of congruity, and contemporary distinction s between cue-target relational and item-specific processing.