Does the generation effect occur for pictures?

The generation effect is the finding that self-generated stimuli are recall ed and recognized better than read stimuli. The effect has been demonstrate d primarily with words. This article examines the effect for pictures in tw o experiments: Subjects named complete pictures (name condition) and fragme nted pictures (generation condition). In Experiment I, memory was tested in 3 explicit tasks: free recall, yes/no recognition, and a source-monitoring task on whether each picture was complete or fragmented (the complete/inco mplete task). The generation effect was found for all 3 tasks. However, in the recognition and source-monitoring tasks, the generation effect was obse rved only in the generation condition. We hypothesized that absence of the effect in the name condition was due to the sensory or process match effect between study and test pictures and the superior identification of picture s in the name condition. Therefore, stimuli were changed from pictures to t heir names in Experiment 2. Memory was tested in the recognition task, comp lete/incomplete task, and second source-monitoring task (success/failure) o n whether each picture had been identified successfully The generation effe ct was observed for all 3 tasks. These results suggest that memory of struc tural and semantic characteristics and of success in identification of gene rated pictures may contribute to the generation effect.