The production effect is the substantial benefit to memory of
having studied information aloud as opposed to silently.
MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, and Ozubko (2010) have
explained this enhancement by suggesting that a word studied
aloud acquires a distinctive encoding record and that
recollecting this record supports identifying a word studied
aloud as “old.” This account was tested using a list
discrimination paradigm, where the task is to identify in which
of 2 studied lists a target word was presented. The critical
list was a mixed list containing words studied aloud and words
studied silently. Under the distinctiveness explanation,
studying an additional list all aloud should disrupt the
production effect in the critical list because remembering
having said a word aloud in the critical list will no longer be
diagnostic of list status. In contrast, studying an additional
list all silently should leave the production effect in the
critical list intact. These predictions were confirmed in 2
experiments.