Issue 5
Vol. 43
2001
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D.
Lohaus, H. Lachnit Three experiments were conducted to investigate the generation effect with pictorial material under conditions of test appropriateness. In Experiment 1 meaningful and meaningless pictures were presented in a mixed list. A recognition test was administered to examine memory for both kinds of material. Additionally, retention of meaningful material was tested in a free recall. Drawing meaningful pictures led to better performance in both tests than simply looking at them. This result is consistent with the semantic activation hypothesis. For meaningless material, however, no generation effect was found. In a second Experiment exclusively meaningless pictures were used. Test appropriateness was achieved by a different recognition test. In order to show that generation effects are not a function of the extra task of drawing the items, subjects in the read condition were asked to trace the items. Results revealed a generation effect for meaningless material. Experiment 3 revealed that the advantage for generated material was not the result of a motivationally caused anti-read-effect. Test appropriateness does not account for the generation effects in Experiments 2 and 3. The findings for meaningful material are interpreted as an indicator for semantic activation being a sufficient condition for generation effects to occur. The generation effects with meaningless material show that semantic activation is not a necessary condition for the emergence of generation effects. Key words: generation effect, meaningful and meaningless pictures, semantic activation hypothesis, test appropriateness Dr.
Daniela Lohaus Prof.
Dr. Harald Lachnit
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