Generation Effect in Words and Logos

Abstract

Generation effect refers to the phenomenon that people memorize information better when they are self-generated rather than simply shown. This effect has been widely applied into fields of education and advertizing. This experiment examines people's memorization of three kinds of visual input of words: negative space, interest (negative space with thin lines that marks of boundary of the letter in negative space), control. We asked the participants to judge the sound components of the words shown, then administered a series of Sudoku which prevents them from rehearsing the words. Finally, a memory task will be given, which presented the participants with the words shown in the first task and check their memorization. We hypothesize that there is a generation effect present in the negative space group. Hence, people would show a higher level of memorization of the words that were presented with negative space. The current data suggests that people memorize the interest group better than the negative space group, better than control group. We explain this in terms of the cueing effect of the lines in the interest group. This experiment is still in progress and we are gathering more data. Current results are subject to change.