Abstract
Subjects were asked to generate long and short sentences using target words, to estimate the effort involved in producing each sentence, and then to recall the target words. Yoked subjects were asked to evaluate target word usage in the sentences generated by the first group and then were assigned the same recall task. Target word recall was significantly greater for subjects generating than for subjects evaluating sentences and for long as opposed to short sentences. Also target word recall was significantly correlated with evaluation ratings but not with effort ratings. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to theoretical accounts of the generation effect and to practical concerns of educators in teaching new vocabulary items.
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This research was supported in part by Contract MDA903-86-K-0155 from the United States Army Research Institute to the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. We are indebted to Lyle Bourne, Edward Crothers, and Robert Crutcher for helpful discussions of this research and comments on an earlier draft of this article.
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Gollub, D., Healy, A.F. Word recall as a function of sentence generation and sentence context. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 25, 359–360 (1987). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330366
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330366