title: Gains and losses in action memory.
abstract: Enacting action phrases (SPT for subject-performed task) produces better free recall than only learning the phrases verbally (VT for verbal task). A widespread explanation of the enactment effect is based on the distinction between item-specific and relational information. There is widespread agreement that the main reason is the excellent item-specific encoding by enactment. However, there is little direct evidence in the case of free recall. The role of relational information is less clear. We suggest that content-based relational encoding is better in VTs than in SPTs. In three experiments, in which multiple free recall testing used item gains and losses as indices of item-specific and content-based relational encoding, respectively, these assumptions were confirmed. Consistently more gains (indexing better item-specific encoding) and more losses (indexing poorer relational encoding) were observed in SPTs than in VTs (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the content-based relational information underlying losses is not identical with order-relational information (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, it was shown that an item-specific orienting task for VTs produced an equivalent number of item gains and losses as did the SPT condition.
authors.affiliation: FR Psychologie, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany. engelkamp@rz.uni-sb.de
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Engelkamp
authors.forename: Kerstin H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Seiler
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall