Elaborations: When do they Help and When do they Hurt?

Theories ofmemory and text processing have begun to emphasize the important role of elaborative processing. The support for this wie is tenuous, most of it beingcorrelational Few studies have been concerned with whetheror not memory is better when the author (or experimenter) provides the embellishment. Most have only looked at effects of elaboration when the readergenerates embellishments, possible confounding degree of effort with degree of elaboration. Experiments are described here where the elaborations are given to the reader. The paper specifies those situations where memory is improved by elaborations, and those that hurt retention.

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