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The present experiments were designed to test a cognitive operations hypothesis of the generation effect, or memorial advantage for stimuli that are generated rather than simply read. In two experiments two aspects of generation were manipulated independently: (a) whether the to-beremembered stimulus was absent (and therefore produced by the subject) or present (and therefore not produced) and (b) whether the relevant cognitive operations were performed by the subject or were instead performed by another agent. Specifically, subjects were given simple multiplication problems with the answers either absent or present in the original problems and with the calculations performed either by themselves or by another agent (either the experimenter or a calculator). The first experiment tested immediate recall of the answers, and the second experiment tested both recall and recognition of the answers after retention intervals up to a week. In all cases, a highly significant retention advantage was found for the tasks requiring multiplication operations by the subjects themselves as opposed to another agent, but there was no main effect for whether the answer was absent or present in the original problem. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results with respect to the generation effect as well as the practical implications with respect to using a calculator in learning the multiplication facts.A growing number of experiments have demonstrated a distinct retention advantage for material that is generated by an individual rather than simply read. In these experiments, the stimuli are often pairs of words presented to subjects under two conditions: read and generate. In the read condition, a pair of words is presented, and subjects read the pair aloud. In the generate condition, a word pair is presented with the first word intact and the second missing one or more letters; subjects must then generate the second word of the pair by using the first word as a context. In the original experiments by Slamecka and Graf (1978), subjects were provided with different contexts or rules for generating the target words. Regardless of the generate context or production rule and regardless of the specific retention task (e.g., free recall, cued recall, or recognition), subjects consistently showed better retention for the generated items versus the items that were simply read.

The role of prior knowledge in retrieval of Spanish-English vocabulary pairs learned using keyword mediators was examined in 4 experiments. Retrieval was tested immediately after learning and after 1-week and 1-month no-practice intervals (Experiment 1), after moderate retrieval practice (Experiment 2), and after extended retrieval practice (Experiments 3 and 4). Using accuracy, latency, and verbal report data, a detailed account of memory retrieval processes was developed. Initial retrieval is an explicit mediation process that involves retrieving keyword mediators into working memory and using them as retrieval cues to access the English equivalents of the Spanish words. After extended vocabulary retrieval practice, this sequential mediation process qualitatively changed to a direct retrieval process in which the English equivalent was accessed in a single working memory step. However, direct retrieval was still influenced by a covert mediation process.

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