Reassessing the basis of the production effect in memory.

The production effect refers to a memory advantage for items studied aloud over items studied silently. Ozubko and MacLeod (2010) used a list-discrimination task to support a distinctiveness account of the production effect over a strength account. We report new findings in this task--including negative production effects--that better fit with an attributional account of this task. According to the attributional account, list judgments are influenced by recognition memory, knowledge of the composition of the 2 lists, and a bias to attribute non-recognized items to the 1st list. Using a recognition task to eliminate these attributional influences revealed production effects consistent with either a distinctiveness or strength account. In our discussion, we consider whether the absence of production effects on implicit-memory tests and in between-group designs provides unequivocal support for a distinctiveness account over a strength account.