31st Annual Student Research Conference
Study versus Testing in a Visual World: The Advantages of Generation
Alena C. Marrese* and Grant C. Wallace
Dr. Robert Tigner, Faculty Mentor
Memory research has established generating responses and envisioning actions are more effective ways to memorize information when compared to other strategies. While past research almost exclusively used printed words as stimuli, our study observes these phenomena using simple images. Participants viewed a slide show of pictures where they were asked to process the images in one of four ways: reading the object label, reading an associated action, generating the object label, or generating an associated action. Participants were then tested on their free recall and recognition memory respectively. Results demonstrated that generation of an associated action is most effective for visual memorization. The study concluded that visualizing actions when viewing images greatly aids and improves memorization. In addition, this outcome further supports the superiority of the generation effect across varying conditions, and may lead to more efficient studying methods.
Keywords: Memory, Images, Generation, Visualization, Study Habits, Testing
Topic(s):Psychology
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 104-1
Location: MG 1098
Time: 8:00