Two experiments assessed how reading aloud versus reading silently would benefit recognition and recall performance of content-specific vocabulary (i.e., the production effect). Participants studied 30 terms from an American history curriculum by reading half of the vocabulary aloud, while the remaining words were read silently. After a brief distractor task, they completed a recognition memory test (Experiment 1) or a recall memory test (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed a benefit for reading aloud. Recognition performance showed a 22% performance advantage, while recall performance showed a smaller advantage for the words read aloud (8% benefit). The vast majority of participants in both experiments showed a memory advantage
