Production enhances familiarity-based associative recognition through the formation of unitized representations

ABSTRACTThe production effect—the robust mnemonic advantage for words or items read aloud relative to those read silently—is well documented in item memory. However, evidence for extending this effect to associative memory remains sparse: only one previous behavioral study has reported such a benefit, and no research to date has directly explored its underlying cognitive mechanisms. To address this gap, the present study employed an associative recognition paradigm to test the hypothesis that overt production enhances associative recognition through the formation of unitized representations. Participants studied semantically related picture pairs under two within-subjects conditions—read-aloud versus silent-reading—and later completed an associative recognition test requiring discrimination among intact, rearranged, and new pairs. Results revealed: (1) a significant production effect on associative recognition, indexed by higher associative recognition discrimination (PrAs) in the read-aloud condition than in the silent-reading condition; and (2) convergent behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for unitization as the mediating mechanism: behaviorally, the production benefit was significantly larger for associative recognition (PrAs) than for item recognition (PrIt); neurophysiologically, a familiarity-related FN400 effect was selectively observed in the read-aloud condition. These findings indicate that overt production does not simply enhance the strength of associative memory; instead, it qualitatively reconfigures the memory's representational basis by promoting unitized memory traces that can support familiarity-based associative recognition.