Processing instructions and the generation effect: a test of the multifactor transfer-appropriate processing theory

We report two experiments designed to test further the multifactor transfer-appropriate processing explanation of generation effects (deWinstanley, Bjork, & Bjork, 1996). The present research focuses on the following assumptions: (a) that processing resources are limited and, thus, the processing of one type of information can be, and often is, incompatible with the processing of other types of information; and (b) that reading and generating differ in terms of the flexibility they permit for the distribution of the subject's processing resources across the available information in an experimental context. These assumptions were tested by examining the consequences of processing instructions on the occurrence of generation effects, and the lack thereof, in free recall and cued recall. Across both experiments, identical processing instructions had strikingly different consequences on the later free-recall and cued-recall performance of subjects who encoded targets by generating them versus reading them, a pattern consistent with the foregoing assumptions.