It can be difficult to judge the effectiveness of encoding techniques in a within-subject design. Consider the "production effect"--the finding that words read aloud are better remembered than words read silently. In the absence of a baseline, a within-subject production effect in a mixed study list could reflect a benefit of reading…

McDaniel and Bugg (2008) proposed that relatively uncommon stimuli and encoding tasks encourage elaborative encoding of individual items (item-specific processing), whereas relatively typical or common encoding tasks encourage encoding of associations among list items (relational processing). It is this relational processing that is thought to…

The production effect refers to a memory advantage for items studied aloud over items studied silently. Ozubko and MacLeod (2010) used a list-discrimination task to support a distinctiveness account of the production effect over a strength account. We report new findings in this task--including negative production effects--that better fit with an…

The production effect is the substantial benefit to memory of having studied information aloud as opposed to silently. MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, and Ozubko (2010) have explained this enhancement by suggesting that a word studied aloud acquires a distinctive encoding record and that recollecting this record supports identifying a word…