Preparing to produce (without production) is sufficient to elicit a behavioral and pupillometric production effect

The production effect refers to the finding that words read aloud are remembered better than words read silently. Historically, this phenomenon has been explained with reference to distinctive features encoded at study (e.g., audition, motor elements) being retrieved at test to discriminate between studied and unstudied items, with emphasis placed on the act of production itself. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that even anticipating being asked to read a word aloud is sufficient to improve memory over silent items. Using a recent variant of the production paradigm involving pupillometry, participants were instructed to withhold their response until a “Go” signal appeared. On “catch” trials this signal never occurred. Despite having not produced the word on a catch trial, participants nonetheless demonstrated both a behavioral (Experiments 1 and 2) and a pupillary (Experiment 2) production effect, although both were of lesser magnitude than on trials requiring actual production. For “Go” trials, the behavioral production effect was evident for both recollection and familiarity; for “catch” trials, the effect was evident only for recollection. These results support recent claims that motivational or attentional factors play a role in the emergence of the production effect, connecting the production effect to a broader framework of action-oriented memory enhancement.