Foley Mary Ann, Foley Hugh J
Department of Psychology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York 12866, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2007 Mar;35(2):211-21. doi: 10.3758/bf03193442.
Generating solutions to anagrams leads to a memory advantage for those solutions, with generated words remembered better than words simply read. However, an additional advantage is not typically found for solutions to difficult anagrams relative to solutions to easy ones, presenting a challenge for the cognitive effort explanation of the generation effect. In the present series of experiments, the effect of manipulating anagram difficulty is explored further by introducing two new source-monitoring judgments. These studies demonstrate that when attention is directed at test to the operations activated during encoding (by way of source-monitoring judgments focused on solving vs. constructing anagrams), a source advantage is observed for difficult anagrams. However, when attention is directed to the anagrams themselves, asking participants to remember the kinds of anagrams generated or solved (based on kind of rule rather than subjective impressions of difficulty), a similar source advantage is not observed. The present studies bring a new perspective to the investigation of difficulty manipulations on memory for problem solving by illustrating the impact of a shift in focus from the effort mediating cognitive operations to specifics about the cognitive operations themselves.
生成变位词的解决方案会使这些解决方案具有记忆优势，生成的单词比单纯阅读的单词记忆得更好。然而，相对于简单变位词的解决方案，通常不会发现困难变位词的解决方案有额外的优势，这给生成效应的认知努力解释带来了挑战。在本系列实验中，通过引入两种新的源监测判断，进一步探讨了操纵变位词难度的影响。这些研究表明，当在测试时将注意力指向编码过程中激活的操作（通过专注于解决与构建变位词的源监测判断）时，会观察到困难变位词的源优势。然而，当将注意力指向变位词本身，要求参与者记住生成或解决的变位词类型（基于规则类型而非难度的主观印象）时，并未观察到类似的源优势。本研究通过说明从介导认知操作的努力到认知操作本身细节的焦点转移的影响，为解决问题的记忆中难度操纵的研究带来了新的视角。
