Enhancing Memory Performance May Be

Enhancing memory performance may be considered a worthwhile avenue of study. Furthering knowledge into how memory exactly works is valuable to education providers trying to develop strategies to improve learning among students. It may also prove helpful to clinicians that seek to further understand mechanisms involved in disorders that are characterized by memory loss. What factors contribute to improved memory of information obtained during the learning process?

McNamara & Healy (2000) sought to investigate this question to its fullest extent. These researchers focused in on a phenomenon known as the generation effect. This term refers to the increased retention of learned information that is demonstrated as a result of self-generating material rather than material that is passively obtained, through methods such as copying or reading. According to these researchers, when individuals generate information, there is a much greater probability that the information will be available for later recognition and recall. Furthermore, actually participating actively in the learning process has been found to facilitate greater retention in comparison to passive observation.

The goal of the research study conducted by McNamara & Healy (2000) was to test the procedural account of the generation effect, or to identify whether reinstating the procedure involved in original encoding of information at the time of cued recall would facilitate recognition and recall. According to the researchers, there are two important components to this account. First, the most important factor involved in the generation effect is that the participants are using cognitive operations that somehow join the target item to information that has been stored in memory, rather than actually producing this item. Second, the cognitive operations involved at study must be reinstated at the time of the memory test. Furthermore, the generation effect is observed due to the fact that generating information is more likely than passive observation to require procedural operations during the encoding phase that can be reinstated during a memory test.

The researchers in this study, McNamara & Healy (2000), studied the generation effect through the examination of episodic memory for answers to multiplication problem that were either generated or simply read by participants. One advantage to using arithmetic problems in the exploration of the generation effect is that the mental procedures of connecting operands to answers during the solving of arithmetic problems is well defined, straightforward, and consistent across participants, much more so than for those procedures involved in linking verbal information. Another advantage is how arithmetic problems are very useful for the examination of the generation effect for tasks involving episodic memory, or tasks where participants must remember the occurrence of generated or passively observed material during the experimental session.

There were two hypotheses of the study conducted by McNamara & Healy (2000). First, consistent with a procedural account, the generation effect would be larger for simple multiplication problems than for problems that were more difficult during an episodic memory task. This hypothesis rests in the belief that participants must be able to reinstate the cognitive operations involved in encoding at the memory test. The procedures involved in the increased encoding of data from simple multiplication problems may be described by the operand retrieval strategy. This refers to process in which a participant recalls and combines operands seen during the study phase and uses relevant operation on the operands to derive answers and check familiarity of responses. According to the researchers, this strategy results in a greater generation effect because participants are engaging in cognitive operations that connect the cue and target both at study and at test.

The second hypothesis of the study by McNamara & Healy (2000) was to disprove the belief that the generation effect is a result of increased effort used to process the information when it is self-generated compared to when it is passively observed. This belief is known as the effort hypothesis.

In order to investigate the generation effect in relation to the procedural account, McNamara & Healy (2000) conducted three experiments. In experiment 1 they compared the generation effect observed for multiplication problems that were either simple or difficult. The participants were shown 12 simple problems or 12 difficult problems, and generated half the answers and read the other half of the answers in either group. A free-recall procedure was used to test the participants' memory for the answers to the problems. The researchers hypothesized that the participants would be less likely to use the operand retrieval strategy in solving difficult problems than with simple problems. It is easier to use the operand retrieval strategy with simple problems because solving them requires no computation. The opposite holds true for difficult multiplication problems. Use of the operand retrieval strategy is expected to be associated with a greater generation effect.

The second experiment in the study examined whether an increased generation effect was possible due to better memory for the operands involved in the problem, what is known as the operand memory hypothesis. The hypothesis for this experiment, which took into consideration the principles of procedural account, was that the generation effect observed for difficult and simple problems should be similar when the operands are recalled, but should be different when recall of answers is required.

The final experiment in the study, experiment 3, investigated whether encoding was possibly involved in the generation effect. The researchers wanted to examine if, contrary to the proposed hypotheses of experiments 1 and 2, the greater generation effect for simple problems is possibly due to greater ease in encoding of the answers. They also sought to explore whether the greater observed generation effect among simple problems was in fact due to greater recognition of the actual answers rather than any reinstatement of cognitive operations.

The results of the first experiment of the study showed that the generation effect for the answers to simple multiplication problems is stronger than for difficult problems. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis proposed at the outset of the study. Also, the presentation of simple problems was also associated with fewer intrusion errors and the engagement of the operand retrieval strategy. The second experiment replicated the results of the first experiment, but when participants were required to require operands rather than answers from the study phase, the generation effect was equal for simple and difficult problems. The final experiment of the study served to refute any possibility that the findings were a result of a confound originating from differences among response terms.