Procedure
The experiment was performed with all participants under the intentional
memory instruction. The participants were given standard instruction
about the intentional free recall test.
Learning phase. — The task was explained with an illustration
using PowerPoint slides displayed on a board at the front of a
classroom. First, the participants were given the following
instructions: “A Kanji word is shown in the upper part of each slide.
The first task is to remember it. There is second task on each page
[pointing to the example on the white board]. In this slide
[assigned to the social elaboration condition], the word “person”
is presented below a Kanji word. On this type of slide, your second task
is to think about any person that you are reminded of by the word. In
the other type of slide [assigned to the semantic elaboration
condition], the word “word” is presented below a Kanji word. On this
type of slide, your task is to think about any word (associated word)
that you are reminded of by the word. ” Participants were given 5
seconds per slide to complete the first and second tasks.
Free recall test phase. Following the learning phase, the
participants were required to recall as many of the targets (Kanji
words) as possible and to write them down. Three min. were allowed for
this test.
Checking phase. Following the free recall test, the
participants were given a sheet with all the target words printed on it.
Each participant was asked to indicate whether each target word reminded
him or her of a person in the social elaboration condition or a word in
the semantic elaboration condition. If a particular target word reminded
the participant of a person or a word, he or she was asked to circle
“generated” on the sheet; if it did not, the participant was asked to
circle “not generated” on the sheet. The checking phase lasted 3 min.
Results
For the 14 targets in the social elaboration condition, the mean numbers
of targets were 8.81 and 5.19 when the target reminded the participants
of a parson (“generated”) or not (“not generated”), respectively.
For the 14 targets in the semantic elaboration condition, the mean
number of targets were 8.08 and 5.92 when the participants was reminded
of a particular word (“generated”) or not (“not generated”),
respectively. On the basis of these numbers, the percentages that the
targets were correctly recalled was calculated. These percentages are
shown in Table 2 as a function of the type of elaboration (social vs.
semantic) and whether the corresponding information was generated
(generated vs. not-generated). A 2 (social vs. semantic) x 2 (generated
vs. not-generated) analysis of variance showed that main effects of type
of elaboration (F 1,51= 17.01, p <.001,
η2=.03) and whether the corresponding information was
generated (F 1,51= 121.15, p <
.01,η2=.39) were significant and that the interaction
between elaboration type and whether the corresponding information was
generated (F1,51= 3.12, p < .08,
η2=.01) was marginally significant. Planned
comparisons were performed for this interaction; although the simple
effect of the elaboration type was not significant in the non-generated
condition (F 1,102 = 1.61), it was significant in the
generated condition (F1, 102 = 15.93, p< .001).
Table 2
Mean percentages of correct recall as a function of the type of
elaboration (social vs. semantic) and whether the corresponding
information was generated or not.