Writing and Long-Term Memory: Evidence for a “Translation” Hypothesis

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effects of writing upon memory. In the first experiment an incidental learning procedure was employed: One group of subjects read words silently and wrote visually presented words, and a second group of subjects listened to auditorily presented words and wrote heard words. Recognition of heard words was substantially enhanced by writing, whereas the effect of writing on memory for read words was less powerful. A second experiment employing an intentional learning procedure replicated these findings and demonstrated the robustness of the beneficial consequences of writing on memory for heard words. These findings are conceptualized within a framework that proposes that translations between specialized processing domains that occur at encoding lead to the formation of distinctive memories and, hence, to better retention.