Reading text aloud benefits memory but not comprehension

• Published in: Memory & cognition Vol. 52; no. 1; pp. 57 - 72
• Main Authors: Roberts, Brady R. T., Hu, Zoey S., Curtis, Eloise, Bodner, Glen E., McLean, David, MacLeod, Colin M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.01.2024; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Psychology; Comprehension; Experiments; Humans; Memory; Mental Recall; Psychology; Reading; Reading comprehension; Recall; Recognition, Psychology; Research Design; Within-subjects design; Production effect; Reading; Text; Comprehension; Memory
• ISSN: 0090-502X; 1532-5946; 1532-5946
• DOI: 10.3758/s13421-023-01442-2

The production effect—that reading aloud leads to better memory than does reading silently—has been defined narrowly with reference to memory; it has been explored largely using word lists as the material to be read and remembered. But might the benefit of production extend beyond memory and beyond individual words? In a series of four experiments, passages from reading comprehension tests served as the study material. Participants read some passages aloud and others silently. After each passage, they completed multiple-choice questions about that passage. Separating the multiple-choice questions into memory-focused versus comprehension-focused questions, we observed a consistent production benefit only for the memory-focused questions. Production clearly improves memory for text, not just for individual words, and also extends to multiple-choice testing. The overall pattern of findings fits with the distinctiveness account of production—that information read aloud stands out at study and at test from information read silently. Only when the tested information is a very close match to the studied information, as is the case for memory questions but not for comprehension questions, does production improve accuracy.