Improving encoding strategies as a function of test knowledge and experience.

Information that is produced or generated during learning is better remembered than information that is passively read, a phenomenon known as the generation effect. Prior research by deWinstanley and Bjork (Memory & Cognition, 32, 945-955, 2004) has shown that learners, after experiencing the memorial benefits of generation in the context of a fill-in-the-blank test following the study of a text passage containing both to-be-read and to-be-generated items, become more effective encoders of to-be-read items on a second passage, thus eliminating the generation effect on a subsequent memory test. Current explanations of this phenomenon assume that learners need to actually experience the generation advantage on the test of the first passage to become more effective encoders of to-be-read items on the second passage. The results of the present research, however, suggest otherwise. Although experiencing a test of the first passage does appear to be critical for leading participants to become better encoders on the second passage, experiencing a generation advantage on the test for the first passage is not. More generally, these results shine new light on the generation effect as well as how and why taking tests has the potential to improve subsequent learning.

Mental fixation and metacognitive predictions of insight in creative problem solving.

Five experiments examined the influence of exposure to fixating information on metacognitive judgements of insight in creative problem solving. Participants were briefly presented with a series of Remote Associates Test problems and were asked to predict the likelihood of solving the problems at a later time. Before making predictions, however, participants were exposed to cue-response pairs designed to induce fixation. Although participants solved fewer problems in this fixation condition than in a baseline condition, when it came to making predictions, participants were just as confident in their ability to solve problems in the fixation condition as they were in the baseline condition. In fact, in some experiments, participants were significantly more confident in the fixation condition than in the baseline condition. These results suggest that people may not take into account the fixating effects of nontarget information when making judgements about their ability to solve problems.