Engelkamp Johannes, Seiler Kerstin H
FR Psychologie, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
Q J Exp Psychol A. 2003 Jul;56(5):829-48. doi: 10.1080/02724980244000648.
Enacting action phrases (SPT for subject-performed task) produces better free recall than only learning the phrases verbally (VT for verbal task). A widespread explanation of the enactment effect is based on the distinction between item-specific and relational information. There is widespread agreement that the main reason is the excellent item-specific encoding by enactment. However, there is little direct evidence in the case of free recall. The role of relational information is less clear. We suggest that content-based relational encoding is better in VTs than in SPTs. In three experiments, in which multiple free recall testing used item gains and losses as indices of item-specific and content-based relational encoding, respectively, these assumptions were confirmed. Consistently more gains (indexing better item-specific encoding) and more losses (indexing poorer relational encoding) were observed in SPTs than in VTs (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the content-based relational information underlying losses is not identical with order-relational information (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, it was shown that an item-specific orienting task for VTs produced an equivalent number of item gains and losses as did the SPT condition.
执行动作短语（用于主体执行任务的SPT）比仅通过口头学习短语（用于言语任务的VT）能产生更好的自由回忆效果。对执行效应的一种普遍解释基于特定项目信息和关系信息之间的区别。人们普遍认为主要原因是执行能进行出色的特定项目编码。然而，在自由回忆的情况下几乎没有直接证据。关系信息的作用尚不清楚。我们认为基于内容的关系编码在言语任务中比在主体执行任务中更好。在三个实验中，多次自由回忆测试分别使用项目增减作为特定项目编码和基于内容的关系编码的指标，这些假设得到了证实。与言语任务相比，在主体执行任务中始终观察到更多的增加（表明更好的特定项目编码）和更多的减少（表明较差的关系编码）（实验1和2）。此外，实验2表明，减少背后基于内容的关系信息与顺序关系信息不同。在实验3中，结果表明言语任务的特定项目定向任务产生的项目增减数量与主体执行任务条件下相同。
