However, measures of memory and measures of organization are two different things; memory is measured by recall and organization is measured by clustering. These two measures are highly correlated . At best, we can say that memory and organization are correlated, we cannot say that good organization causes good memory. Perhaps, good memory causes good organization! (the more you remember, the more capable you are of detecting a relationship among items at input. You see relationships among items as you recall them and organize your recall according to these relationships, e.g. experts, Rajhan)

Organizational processes contribute to good memory

Why/ how?

1) Mandler - economy of storage (encoding);

- organize information bits into holistic units / saves on the number of the to- be- stored items

- organization improves memory because the amount of inf stored per unit is increased (chunking)

- assumes that organization occurs at encoding as the info comes in

2) Tulving - org. benefits memory because of its effects on retrieval

- organization occurs as an encoding process of integrating separate items into holistic units

- the benefit of memory derives from the ability to access the whole unit at retrieval

- once the unit is accessed, all the information within the unit can be retrieved

Memory benefits from both distinctive(encoding the differences) and organizational(encoding the similarities) processing. 

Epstein, Phillips, & Johnson (1975); Begg (1978)

Ss were given related or unrelated word pairs and either asked to rate their similarities or their differences (beer-wine); (beer-dog). Memory for the pairs was tested.

Findings: related pairs are remembered better when attending to differences; unrelated pairs rem'd better when attending to similarities

Conclusion: encoding involves attention to certain aspects of events, some shared some different. Optimal memory requires both. (think of faces)

Self- generation effects in memory

GENERATION EFFECT - (Slamecka & Graf, 78) - we remember things better if we generate our own retrieval cues (do it yourself)

Slamecka & Graf - group one asked to generate an antonym; group two given an antonym (FAST_ S___) vs. (FAST SLOW). The test was to recall the second word of each pair

Generation effects occur under different memory conditions (recall, recognition); they are obtained with many types of materials; and they work with non-semantic as well as semantic tasks.

Glisky & Rabinowitz (85) what is important in generation; the process or the product?

Group 1 - generated the completion of word fragments

Group 2 - read the same words

Test: Ss saw both words and fragments. Fragments were to be completed and then a recognition decision made about the completed word as a member of the study list. Complete words simply had to be recognized.

READ_READ ELEPHANT - ELEPHANT

GENERATE _- GENERATE -LEP--NT/ -LEP--NT

READ - GENERATE ELEPHANT / -LEP--NT

GENERATE - READ -LEP--NT / ELEPHANT

RESULTS: GENERATION AT STUDY LED TO BETTER RECOGNITION OF THE ITEMS THAN READING AT STUDY REGARDLESS OF TEST CONDITION (THE GENERATION EFFECT)

RECOGNITION WAS BETTER FOR ITEMS IN THE GEN/GEN COND. THAN IN THE GEN/READ COND

Implications: the generation process contributes to memory over and above the effect of a generated product. The psychological process of generation is at least as important as the structural representation produced by the process in accounting for generation

Organization at encoding produces the general information being described in the retrieval process. Organization is the extraction of shared information. Results from organization can be a useful starting point for retrieval. Information specific to the event in question within the general organization is also extracted at encoding. This specific or distinctive information is necessary if we are to move from general information to specific event memory in retrieval. (ESP) What can be retrieved is what has been stored. And what has been stored can only be retrieved under the appropriate circumstances.(remember the studies on general vs. specific questions about some autobiographical information)

Mantayla (1986) the power of self-generated retrieval cues. Ss were instructed to generate three properties for each word. when they were again given those properties as retrieval cues they performed at the 90% level.

McDaniel, Wadill, & Einstein (1988) the generation effect can be explained as the "enhancement of both relational and distinctive processing". Generating information is analogous to problem solving. Ss use whatever cues are available to solve the problem including cue words, word fragments,, and even other read or generated words in the studied list. In the course of problem solving, the task focuses the subject on relational or distinctive aspects of the tbr information (remember from the domains of processing/ not more processing at the same level but more types of processing leads to better memory)

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