Dissociative effects of elaboration on memory of enacted and non-enacted events: a case of a negative effect

One experiment compared the effect of elaboration on enacted and non-enacted events. The commands were either presented in a basic form (e.g., "wave your hands") or in an enriched form. The commands were enriched by adding statements to the commands of how to perform the actions (e.g., "wave your hands as a conductor"). Free- and cued-recall data showed elaboration to have a dissociative effect on enacted and non-enacted events. Memory for the non-enacted events benefited from enrichment, whereas simple enacted events were remembered to a higher extent than complex enacted events. Lack of benefit from elaboration on memory of enacted events is suggested to be due to enactment leading to a sufficient degree of item-specific processing, and a negative effect of elaboration is suggested to occur when the way of manipulating item complexity decreases the familiarity of the actions. Familiarity ratings of the items by two independent groups of subjects supported this interpretation.