Generation Effect

What is the Generation Effect?

The generation effect is the tendency to remember information better when you produce it yourself than when you simply read comparable information. A typical experiment asks people to generate a synonym or complete a word from a cue, then tests their memory later.

Example of the Generation Effect

Imagine being shown a word and asked to supply its opposite. Producing the answer is the generation task. Reading the same word and its supplied opposite is the comparison. The question is whether generating the answer helps you remember it later.

This is more specific than the broad advice to “be an active learner.” The task changes what you do with particular material, and the memory test checks what you retain.

What the Research Shows

Bertsch and colleagues’ 2007 meta-analysis combined 445 effect sizes from 86 studies and found an average memory advantage of about 0.40 standard deviations. The size of the benefit varied substantially across conditions.

Implications for Learning

Generating an answer can be a useful alternative to reading it again. A flashcard that asks you to produce an answer captures that distinction, although its value also depends on how it is used.

The effect does not establish that all creative tasks, summaries, or explanations improve learning for the same reason. Those activities ask people to do different things. Nor does it mean that making a task harder will keep improving memory. More effort is not automatically better.

For a different influence on recall, compare the picture superiority effect.