Production Effects Of Word Memory

The phenomenon that reading aloud is more effective than silent reading in the individual’s recognition of material is called the "production effect".According to previous studies,the production effect is stable when single experimental materials such as words,word pairs,and sentences are used.Although the production effect is stable in the native language context,it is not entirely clear whether the production effect is also stable in the memory of second language materials,whether the magnitude of the effect is exactly the same,and whether the previous theoretical assumptions can also explain the results in second language.Moreover,a number of studies have shown that the two modes of reading compared by production effects,namely reading aloud and silent reading,usually have to be designed as withinsubjects factors to obtain relatively stable effects.Signal distinctiveness theory and attentional resource theory have provided different explanations of the behavioral mechanisms underlying the production of this effect from different perspectives.Therefore,the present study attempted to design within-subject and between-subject experiments in different contexts of native and second language to directly compare the stability of the production effect,the size of the effect,and the mechanism differences in behavior.Experiment 1 used a 2(reading mode: read aloud,silent reading)× 2(material language: Vietnamese,Chinese)within-subjects experimental design.Thirty Vietnamese with Chinese Proficiency Test(HSK)level 4 were recruited as participants,and Vietnamese vocabulary and Chinese vocabulary were used as reading materials for the memory experiment,with each material appearing only once and the reading order being balanced between groups.According to the signal detection theory,the statistical results with the discrimination index d’ as the dependent variable found that: the main effect of individual reading mode was significant,i.e.,the memory effect of reading aloud was significantly better than that of silent reading,verifying the existence of the production effect;the main effect of material language was significant,i.e.,individuals’ memory performance for Vietnamese vocabulary was significantly better than that for Chinese vocabulary,which was consistent with the previous results that individuals’ memory for their native language was better than that for This is consistent with the previous results that individuals’ memory for their native language is better than that of their second language;while the interaction between reading mode and material language is not significant.It indicates that there is also a stable production effect in terms of the perceptiveness of recognition in a bilingual context.The statistical results with judgment criterion C as the dependent variable found that: the main effect of reading mode was significant,and the individuals’ judgment criterion for silent reading was stricter than that for reading aloud;the main effect of material language was significant,and the individuals’ judgment criterion for Vietnamese was stricter than that for Chinese;the interaction between reading mode and material language was significant,specifically in the Vietnamese condition,the judgment criterion for reading aloud was more relaxed than that for silent reading,but in the Chinese condition,the judgment criterion for reading aloud and There was no significant difference between the judgment criteria in the Chinese condition and the silent reading condition.This indicates that the production effect is also enhanced to some extent in terms of the judgment criterion of recognition in the bilingual context.Experiment 2 used a 2(reading mode: read aloud,silent reading)× 2(material language: Vietnamese,Chinese)mixed experimental design,in which the reading mode was a within-subject design,and the material language was a between-subject design.Forty Vietnamese subjects with HSK level 4 were recruited to participate in the experiment and divided into two groups of 20 participants each,with the same experimental materials and procedures as in Experiment 1.The results with the discrimination index d’ as the dependent variable found that: the main effect of individuals’ reading mode was significant,i.e.,the memory performance in the readaloud condition was significantly better than that in the silent reading condition;the interaction between reading mode and material language was significant,as shown by the greater performance of individuals’ memory for Chinese vocabulary compared to Vietnamese vocabulary in the read-aloud condition.It indicates that there is a stable and enhanced production effect in terms of the perceptiveness of recognition in a second language context.The results with judgment criterion C as the dependent variable found that: the main effect of reading mode was significant,with individuals judging the silent reading condition more strictly than the read-aloud condition;the main effect of material language was significant,with individuals judging Vietnamese vocabulary more strictly than Chinese vocabulary;the interaction between reading mode and material language was significant,as shown by the fact that the judgment criterion was more relaxed in the read-aloud condition than in the silent reading condition in Vietnamese,but In the Chinese condition,there was no significant difference between the judgment criteria in the read-aloud and silent reading conditions.Again,this indicates that the production effect was enhanced in the second language context.In general,the present study shows that(1)consistent with the results of previous studies of native language materials,the memory effect of reading aloud is significantly better than that of silent reading,which verifies the existence of the production effect in the second language context,and the effect is not influenced by between-subject’s factors.(2)The production effect in the second language context was enhanced to a certain extent compared to the native language,as evidenced by the increased perception of recognition and stricter judgment criteria.(3)In contrast,the distinctiveness theory can better explain the experimental results.