The Production Effect in Memory

Abstract

Producing items by means as simple as saying, writing, or typing them can yield substantial memory improvements relative to silent reading. We review the research on this production effect and outline some important extensions and boundary conditions. We also evaluate the evidence that production enhances the distinctiveness of items in memory during encoding, thereby facilitating their later retrieval. There are issues to resolve and areas to explore, but production offers a practical means of enhancing some forms of long-term, explicit memory.