Role of distinctive processing during retrieval

Encoding tasks that engage bath distinctive and organizational processing p roduce superior recall relative to tasks that engage only one type of proce ssing (e.g., Hunt Bi Einstein, 1981). In 1993, Hunt and McDaniel proposed t hat organizational processing entails the relationships that specify the en coding episode, while distinctive processing allows the discrimination of p articular items that share these relationships. The experiments presented h ere replicate previous findings from cued recall tests supporting the propo sed roles for distinctive and organizational processing. Unlike previous re search that generally has been limited to the use of encoding manipulations to investigate the benefits of these processes, the present experiments co ntrasted performance on tests of cued recall and category production. The r esults showed that the usefulness of distinctive processing is limited to t esting situations that require production of specific items. In contrast, o rganization is shown to be beneficial for both cued recall and category pro duction. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that organizatio n and distinctiveness serve different functions in recall and support the u se of Tenpenny and Shoben's 1992 component process analysis in the investig ation of retrieval.