Jonathan G. Tullis

What makes distributed practice effective

The advantages provided to memory by the distribution of multiple practice or study opportunities are among the most powerful effects in memory research. In this paper, we critically review the class of theories that presume contextual or encoding variability as the sole basis for the advantages of distributed practice, and recommend an alternative approach based on the idea that some study events remind learners of other study events. Encoding variability theory encounters serious challenges in two important phenomena that we review here: superadditivity and nonmonotonicity. The bottleneck in such theories lies in the assumption that mnemonic benefits arise from the increasing independence, rather than interdependence, of study opportunities. The reminding model accounts for many basic results in the literature on distributed practice, readily handles data that are problematic for encoding variability theories, including superadditivity and nonmonotonicity, and provides a unified theoretical framework for understanding the effects of repetition and the effects of associative relationships on memory.

Metacognition of the testing effect: guiding learners to predict the benefits of retrieval.

If the mnemonic benefits of testing are to be widely realized in real-world learning circumstances, people must appreciate the value of testing and choose to utilize testing during self-guided learning. Yet metacognitive judgments do not appear to reflect the enhancement provided by testing Karpicke & Roediger (Science 319:966–968, 2008). In this article, we show that under judicious conditions, learners can indeed reveal an understanding of the beneficial effects of testing, as well as the interaction of that effect with delay (Experiment 1). In that experiment, subjects made judgments of learning (JOLs) for previously studied or previously tested items in either a cue-only or a cue–target context, and either immediately or after a 1-day delay. When subjects made judgments in a cue-only context, their JOLs accurately reflected the effects of testing, both immediately and at a delay. To evaluate the potential of exposure to such conditions for promoting generalized appreciation of testing effects, three further experiments elicited global predictions about restudied and tested items across two study/test cycles (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). The results indicated that learners’ global naïve metacognitive beliefs increasingly reflect the beneficial effects of testing when learners experience these benefits with increasing external support. If queried under facilitative circumstances, learners appreciate the mnemonic enhancement that testing provides on both an item-by-item and global basis but generalize that knowledge to future learning only with considerable guidance.

Metacognitive Control of Learning and Remembering

This chapter reviews research on the role of metacognition in self-directed learning, with a particular emphasis on metacognitive control. Learners can regulate their study experience to enhance learning by self-pacing study effectively, devising efficient study schedules, judiciously selecting items for study and re-study, strategically making use of self-testing strategies, accommodating study to anticipated test conditions, and using successful retrieval strategies. We review research that reveals how learners use these strategies in simple laboratory tasks and that suggests how such metacognitive skills can be improved through instruction or experience. We end by addressing the supportive role that information technology can play in the processes by which metacognition influences learning and memory.

The Effectiveness of Updating Metacognitive Knowledge in the Elderly: Evidence From Metamnemonic Judgments of Word Frequency

Accurate metacognitive knowledge is vital for optimal performance in self-regulated learning. Yet older adults have deficiencies in implementing effective learning strategies and knowledge updating and consequently may not learn as effectively from task experience as younger adults. Here we assess the ability of older adults to update metacognitive knowledge about the effects of word frequency on recognition. Young adults have been shown to correct their misconceptions through experience with the task, but the greater difficulty older adults have with knowledge updating makes it unclear whether task experience will be sufficient for older adults. The performance of older adults in this experiment qualitatively replicates the results of a comparison group of younger subjects, indicating that both groups are able to correct their metacognitive knowledge through task experience. Older adults seem to possess more effective and flexible metacognition than sometimes suggested.

The Reminding Effect: Presentation of Associates Enhances Memory for Related Words in a List

One aspect of successful cognition is the efficient use of prior relevant knowledge in novel situations. Remindings-stimulus-guided retrievals of prior events-allow us to link prior knowledge to current problems by prompting us to retrieve relevant knowledge from events that are distant from the present. Theorizing in research on higher cognition makes much use of the concept of remindings, yet many basic mnemonic consequences of remindings are untested. Here we consider implications of reminding-based theories of the effects of repetition on memory (Benjamin & Tullis, 2010; Hintzman, 2011). Those theories suggest that the spacing of repeated presentations of material benefits memory when the later experience reminds the learner of the earlier one. When applied to memory for related, rather than repeated, material, these theories predict a reminding effect: a mnemonic boost caused by a nearby presentation of a related item. In 7 experiments, we assessed this prediction by having learners study lists of words that contained related word pairs. Recall performance for the first presentation in related pairs was higher than for equivalent items in unrelated pairs, while recognition performance for items in related pairs did not differ from those in unrelated pairs. Remindings benefit only the recollection of the retrieved episodes.

Criterion noise in ratings-based recognition: evidence from the effects of response scale length on recognition accuracy.

Rating scales are a standard measurement tool in psychological research. However, research has suggested that the cognitive burden involved in maintaining the criteria used to parcel subjective evidence into ratings introduces decision noise and affects estimates of performance in the underlying task. There has been debate over whether such decision noise is evident in recognition, with some authors arguing that it is substantial and others arguing that it is trivial or nonexistent. Here we directly assess the presence of decision noise by evaluating whether the length of a rating scale on which recognition judgments are provided is inversely related to performance on the recognition task. That prediction was confirmed: Rating scales with more options led to lower estimates of recognition than did scales with fewer options. This result supports the claim that decision noise contributes to recognition judgments and additionally suggests that caution is warranted when using rating scales more generally.

Consequences of restudy choices in younger and older learners

Allowing young learners to exert metacognitive control over learning often improves memory performance; however, little research has examined the consequences of giving older adults control over learning. In this study, younger and older adults studied word pairs before choosing half of the word pairs for restudy. Learners either restudied the items they chose (in the honor condition) or the items they did not choose (the dishonor condition; Kornell & Metcalfe, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 32:609–622, 2006). Older and younger learners chose the same types of items for restudy, but the effectiveness of these choices differed greatly by age. For young learners, memory was superior in the honor condition, but older learners actually revealed numerically higher performance in the dishonor condition. This reveals a dramatic failure of metacognitive control, in the absence of any obvious monitoring deficit, in older adults. Implications for models of self-regulated learning are discussed.

Self-pacing study of faces of different races: metacognitive control over study does not eliminate the cross-race recognition effect

People often recognize same-race faces better than other-race faces. This cross-race effect (CRE) has been proposed to arise in part because learners devote fewer cognitive resources to encode faces of social out-groups. In three experiments, we evaluated whether learners’ other-race mnemonic deficits are due to “cognitive disregard” during study and whether this disregard is under metacognitive control. Learners studied each face either for as long as they wanted (the self-paced condition) or for the average time taken by a self-paced learner (the fixed-rate condition). Self-paced learners allocated equal amounts of study time to same-race and other-race faces, and having control over study time did not change the size of the CRE. In the second and third experiments, both self-paced and fixed-rate learners were given instructions to “individuate” other-race faces. Individuation instructions caused self-paced learners to allocate more study time to other-race faces, but this did not significantly reduce the size of the CRE, even for learners who reported extensive contact with other races. We propose that the differential processing that people apply to faces of different races and the subsequent other-race mnemonic deficit are not due to learners’ strategic cognitive disregard of other-race faces.

Remindings influence the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli

Remindings—stimulus-guided retrievals of prior events—may help us interpret ambiguous events by linking the current situation to relevant prior experiences. Evidence suggests that remindings play an important role in interpreting complex ambiguous stimuli (Ross & Bradshaw Memory & Cognition, 22, 591–605, 1994); here, we evaluate whether remindings will influence word interpretation and memory in a new paradigm. Learners studied words on distinct visual backgrounds and generated a sentence for each word. Homographs were preceded by a biasing cue on the same background three items earlier, preceded by a biasing cue on a different background three items earlier, or followed by a biasing cue on the same background three items later. When biasing cues preceded the homographs on the same backgrounds as the homographs, the meanings of the homographs in learner-generated sentences were consistent with the biasing cues more often than in the other two conditions. These results show that remindings can influence word interpretation. In addition, later memory for the homographs and cues was greater when the meaning of the homograph in the sentence was consistent with the earlier biasing cue, suggesting that remindings enhanced mnemonic performance. Remindings play an important role in how we interpret ambiguous stimuli and enhance memory for the involved material.

Cue generation: How learners flexibly support future retrieval

The successful use of memory requires us to be sensitive to the cues that will be present during retrieval. In many situations, we have some control over the external cues that we will encounter. For instance, learners create shopping lists at home to help remember what items to later buy at the grocery store, and they generate computer file names to help remember the contents of those files. Generating cues in the service of later cognitive goals is a complex task that lies at the intersection of metacognition, communication, and memory. In this series of experiments, we investigated how and how well learners generate external mnemonic cues. Across 5 experiments, learners generated a cue for each target word in a to-be-remembered list and received these cues during a later cued recall test. Learners flexibly generated cues in response to different instructional demands and study list compositions. When generating mnemonic cues, as compared to descriptions of target items, learners produced cues that were more distinct than mere descriptions and consequently elicited greater cued recall performance than those descriptions. When learners were aware of competing targets in the study list, they generated mnemonic cues with smaller cue-to-target associative strength but that were even more distinct. These adaptations led to fewer confusions among competing targets and enhanced cued recall performance. These results provide another example of the metacognitively sophisticated tactics that learners use to effectively support future retrieval.