Characterizing production: the production effect is eliminated for unusual voices unless they are frequent at study

The production effect refers to the finding that items read aloud are better remembered than items read silently. This is often explained with reference to distinctiveness, arguing that aloud items become associated with distinctive sensorimotor features that facilitate retrieval at test. Based on this framework, more distinctive forms of production should result in larger production effects. The present study tested this theory by having participants study items silently or aloud in either their own voice or as a popular character. Participants were then tested for those items using recognition memory. Relative to silent items, aloud items read in the participants' own voice demonstrated a typical production effect; however, contrary to any predictions, no production effect was observed for the character voices. We next manipulated how frequently the character voice was used relative to the participants' own voice. This revealed a production effect for character voices only when those voices were more common than the participant's own voice. This pattern could not be attributed to cognitive demands or performance anxiety but was predicted by a novel computational account based on the Retrieving Effectively from Memory (REM) model. Our results show that the relation between distinctiveness and memory is not necessarily linear.