Enactment Effect and Memory in Stroke Patients

The study investigates why performing an action (enactment) when learning a word enhances memory

more than simply reading the word — a phenomenon known as the Enactment Effect.

The authors compared memory performance across three groups: healthy older adults, individuals with

focal strokes in the frontal lobe, and individuals with strokes in the posterior parietal

lobe. They used two encoding conditions (silent reading vs. enactment) and tested free

recall. Results showed that healthy controls and frontal-lesion participants exhibited

a strong enactment benefit (better recall for enacted words), whereas the parietal-lesion

participants showed no such advantage. Because only the group with parietal damage lost the