Effect Of The Congruence Of Generating And Retrieval Process Types On Generation Effect

Generation effect means that a self-generated word is better remembered than one that is read. Generation effect is critically important in the development of implicit memory and in the distinction between perceptual and conceptual priming. Theories of generation effect include two categories: those stress items' features in generation tasks and those stress the process of generating per se. Neither of them can successfully explain all results about the effect.Two experiments examined whether the congruence of generating and retrieval process types affects generation effect in implicit and explicit memory. The first expe-Riment results showed that generation effect appeared in semantic association test retrieving targets' semantic when generating antonym which was primarily processed in semantic; for orthography association test retrieving targets' orthography, generation effect occurred when completing fragment which was primarily processed in orthography. In the second experiment, generation effect appeared in both semantic- cue recall retrieving targets' semantic and orthography - cue recall retrieving targets' orthography when completing fragment; generation effect occurred only in semantic-cue recall when generating antonym.The following conclusions could be drawn from the experiments:(1) The congruence of generating and retrieval process types affects generation effect in implicit memory. That's, generation effect should occurre in implicit memory when generating and retrieval process types are identical. If not, this effect wouldn't occurre in implicit memory.(2) The congruence of generating and retrieval process types affects generation effect in data-driven explicit memory.But for concept-driven explicit memory,generat-ion effect will occurre if only target items are generated from cue items in lexical status.(3) Generation effect doesn't always occurre in concept-driven memory . Otherwise it occurres in data-driven memory under some conditions. So,generation effect is not a good criterion for defining memory tests as data-driven or concept-driven.