CONSTRAINTS ON EFFECTIVE ELABORATION - EFFECTS OF PRECISION AND SUBJECT GENERATION

Two experiments are presented which examine constraints that determine the effectiveness of subject-generated and experimenter-provided elaborations. Experiment I demonstrates that elaborations facilitate performance only when they clarify the precise significance of target concepts in the acquisition sentences. Experiment II demonstrates that prompting subjects to ask relevant questions facilitates both the precision of elaboration and subsequent retention. The implications of these findings for theories of learning and retention are discussed. © 1979 Academic Press, Inc.