Lin Olivia Y H, MacLeod Colin M
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2012 Sep;66(3):212-6. doi: 10.1037/a0028309. Epub 2012 Jun 11.
The production effect refers to the benefit in memory for items read aloud relative to items read silently during study. Previous research has explained this benefit as due to distinctiveness, attributable to the additional dimension of encoding for the aloud items that is later used during retrieval. We investigated the production effect in older adults, a population known to have difficulty using distinctiveness to assist remembering. Results showed a production benefit for both younger and older adults on both recall and recognition tests; however, this benefit was reliably smaller for older adults on both measures of memory. This pattern addresses both a theoretical issue and an applied issue: (1) that the role of distinctiveness is pivotal in the production effect, and (2) that production does assist older people in remembering.
生成效应是指在学习过程中，相对于默读的项目，大声朗读的项目在记忆方面具有优势。先前的研究将这种优势解释为源于独特性，这是由于大声朗读的项目在编码时具有额外的维度，而这一维度在后续检索时会被利用。我们对老年人的生成效应进行了研究，已知这一群体在利用独特性来辅助记忆方面存在困难。结果显示，在回忆和识别测试中，年轻人和老年人都表现出了生成优势；然而，在这两种记忆测量中，老年人的这种优势明显较小。这种模式解决了一个理论问题和一个应用问题：（1）独特性在生成效应中起关键作用；（2）生成确实有助于老年人记忆。
