Consider the following situation. You play an online science game in which you travel to a distant planet that has high winds and rain, and your job is to design a plant that would survive there – including choosing appropriate roots, stem, and leaves. You get feedback from an on-screen character named Herman the Bug, who also explains how plants grow. Herman is not very friendly and seems to be just listing fact after fact, so you do not put much effort into trying to understand what he says. On a subsequent retention test, you can remember parts of some of his sentences, and on a transfer test, you are not able to apply what was presented to solving new problems.

What is generative processing underutilization? This is a situation in which you have cognitive capacity available but you do not choose to use it for making sense of the material – a situation that can be called generative processing underutilization. Learners may fail to engage in generative processing because they are not motivated to make sense of the material. When the on-screen tutor is not very friendly or presents boring material, learners may not be inclined to work hard to understand what he is saying. Box 4.1 summarizes the problem of generative processing underutilization – in which the speaker appears to be unfriendly or does not use graphics to help concretize the material.