Production benefits recognition equally for verbs and nouns

The memory improvement for words that are read aloud compared to silently (the production effect) was examined for people speaking verbs and people speaking nouns. Participants were 3 male and 14 female adults (age range = 19 - 46 years; mean age = 29 years) who spoke English as a first language, with normal or corrected vision. I examined whether the size of the production effect was different for people using verbs compared to nouns. I also examined participants' memory judgements for verbs and nouns following production. There was a large, significant increase in recognition for spoken words compared to silently read words. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the size of the effect when people spoke verbs compared to nouns. A Bayesian analysis indicated weak evidence that people's memory judgments do not differ following production of verbs versus nouns. These results indicate that the production effect is unaffected by word-class, which supports the idea that it could be used to improve teaching and learning outcomes in applied settings.