Productions Need Not Match Study Items to Confer a Production Advantage, But It Helps

The production effect is the finding that, relative to silent reading, producing information at study (e.g., reading aloud) leads to a benefit in memory. In most studies of this effect, individuals are presented with a set of unique items, and they produce a subset of these items (e.g., they are presented with the to-be-remembered target item TABLE and produce table) such that the production is both unique and representative of the target. Across two preregistered experiments, we examined the influence of a production that is unique but that does not match the target (e.g., producing fence to the target TABLE, producing car to the target TREE, and so on). This kind of production also yielded a significant effect-the mismatching production effect-although it was smaller than the standard production effect (i.e., when productions are both unique and representative of their targets) and was detectable only when targets with standard productions were included in the same study phase (i.e., when the type of production was manipulated within participant). We suggest that target-production matching is an important precursor to the production effect and that the kind of production that brings about a benefit depends on the other productions that are present.