Words generated from anagrams seem to be remembered better than words that have simply been read (MacLeod & Daniels, 2000). Over 100 years ago, Ebbinghaus described two ways of remembering, voluntary and involuntary recollection. Ebbinghaus" studies brought about two classes of memory tests. Indirect tests which reveal things in our memory that we are unaware of. Direct tests reveal things that we consciously tap our memories in order to find, looking for references in an article that we wish to find, for example. MacLeod and Daniels (2000) used the direct testing approach to conduct an experiment on directed forgetting and the generation effect. Subjects participating in the MacLeod and Daniels study were asked to read 20 words and generated 20 others from definitions during a 40-item study phase. It was found that the words that were generated were harder to forget than the words that were just read.
Many people have wondered why they are able to score higher on tests when they use memory association for answers to questions rather than simply reading the answers. The generation effect may be the answer. The hypothesis that Group Generate would remember more words than Group Read was tested on college students. Group Generation was asked to generate words from the original list while Group Read was asked to simply read the list of words and their antonyms. .
Method.
Participants.
There were 17 participants, 12 females and 5 males. The participants were Psychology majors and 1 Psychology minor. Extra credit for participating was not offered.
Materials.
Two lists of 19 pairs of antonyms were used. Group Generate's list contained a complete-the-blank answer page (e.g., "boy-g_ _ _") whereas Group Read's list contained the same pairs of antonyms completed. Paper and pens/pencils were also used.
Procedure.
The participants were randomly assigned to one of the two groups. Group Read sat on one side of the room while Group Generation sat on the other.
