Shana K. Carpenter

Impoverished cue support enhances subsequent retention : Support for the elaborative retrieval explanation of the testing effect

In three experiments, we investigated the role of transfer-appropriate processing and elaborative processing in the testing effect. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the magnitude of the testing effect reflects the match between intervening and final tests by factorially manipulating the type of intervening and final tests. Retention was not enhanced for matching, relative to mismatching, intervening and final tests, contrary to the transfer-appropriate-processing view. In Experiment 2, we examined final retention as a function of the number of cues needed to retrieve items on intervening cued recall tests. In this case, fewer retrieval cues were associated with better memory on the final test. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiment 2 while controlling for individual item difficulty and directly manipulating the number of cues present. These findings suggest that an intervening test may be most beneficial to final retention when it provides more potential for elaborative processing.

Cue strength as a moderator of the testing effect: the benefits of elaborative retrieval.

The current study explored the elaborative retrieval hypothesis as an explanation for the testing effect: the tendency for a memory test to enhance retention more than restudying. In particular, the retrieval process during testing may activate elaborative information related to the target response, thereby increasing the chances that activation of any of this information will facilitate later retrieval of the target. In a test of this view, participants learned cue-target pairs, which were strongly associated (e.g., Toast: Bread) or weakly associated (e.g., Basket: Bread), through either a cued recall test (Toast: _____) or a restudy opportunity (Toast: Bread). A final test requiring free recall of the targets revealed that tested items were retained better than restudied items, and although strong cues facilitated recall of tested items initially, items recalled from weak cues were retained better over time, such that this advantage was eliminated or reversed at the time of the final test. Restudied items were retained at similar rates on the final test regardless of the strength of the cue-target relationship. These results indicate that the activation of elaborative information-which would occur to a greater extent during testing than restudying--may be one mechanism that underlies the testing effect.

Enhancing learning and retarding forgetting: choices and consequences.

Our research on learning enhancement has been focusing on the consequences for learning and forgetting of some of the more obvious and concrete choices that arise in instruction, including questions such as these: How does spacing of practice affect retention of information over significant retention intervals (up to 1 year)? Do spacing effects generalize beyond recall of verbal materials? Is feedback needed to promote learning, and must it be immediate? Although retrieval practice has been found to enhance learning in comparison with additional study, does it actually reduce the rate of forgetting? Can retrieval practice effects be extended to nonverbal materials? We suggest that as we begin to find answers to these questions, it should become possible for cognitive psychology to offer nonobvious advice that can be applied in a variety of instructional contexts to facilitate learning and reduce forgetting.

The effects of tests on learning and forgetting.

In three experiments, we investigated whether memory tests enhance learning and reduce forgetting more than additional study opportunities do. Subjects learned obscure facts (Experiments 1 and 2) or Swahili-English word pairs (Experiment 3) by either completing a test with feedback (test/study) or receiving an additional study opportunity (study). Recall was tested after 5 min or 1, 2, 7, 14, or 42 days. We explored forgetting by means of an ANOVA and also by fitting a power function to the data. In all three experiments, testing enhanced overall recall more than restudying did. According to the power function, in two out of three experiments, testing also reduced forgetting more than restudying did, although this was not always the case according to the ANOVA. We discuss the implications of these results both for approaches to measuring forgetting and for the use of tests in promoting long-term retention. The stimuli used in these experiments may be found at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Semantic information activated during retrieval contributes to later retention: Support for the mediator effectiveness hypothesis of the testing effect.

Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.

What types of learning are enhanced by a cued recall test

In two experiments, we investigated what types of learning benefit from a cued recall test. After initial exposure to a word pair (A+B), subjects experienced either an intervening cued recall test (A→?) with feedback, or a restudy presentation (A→B). The final test could be cued recall in the same (A→?) or opposite (?→B) direction, or free recall of just the cues (Recall As) or just the targets (Recall Bs). All final tests revealed a benefit for testing as opposed to restudying. Tests produced a direct benefit for information that was retrieved on the intervening test (B). This benefit also “spilled over” to facilitate recall of information that was present on the test but not retrieved (A). Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Testing Enhances the Transfer of Learning

Many studies have shown that retrieving information during a test facilitates later memory for that information. Most research on this testing effect has focused on retention of information measured via a final test that is similar to the initial test. Much less is known about the potential of testing to promote the application—i.e., transfer—of learning. In this article, I review recent studies that have begun to address this issue, specifically with regard to the benefits of testing on transfer across temporal contexts, test formats, and knowledge domains. The small but growing number of studies on this topic have so far reported robust benefits of testing on transfer of learning. Future research is encouraged that explores the potential of tests to promote not just direct retention of information, but also the application of knowledge to new situations.

Testing Beyond Words: Using Tests to Enhance Visuospatial Map Learning

Psychological research shows that learning can be powerfully enhanced through testing, but this finding has so far been confined to memory tasks requiring verbal responses. We explored whether testing can enhance learning of visuospatial information in maps. Fifty subjects each studied two maps, one through conventional study, and the other through computer-prompted tests. For the tests, the subjects were repeatedly presented with the same map with one feature deleted (e.g., a road or a river), and they tried to covertly recall the missing feature and its location. Subjects’ map drawings after 30 min were significantly better for maps learned through tests in comparison with maps learned through the same amount of time devoted to conventional study. These results suggest that the testing effect is not limited to the types of memory that require discrete, verbal responses, and that utilizing covert retrievals may allow the effect to be extended to a variety of complex, nonverbal learning tasks.

The Wickelgren Power Law and the Ebbinghaus Savings Function

Wayne Wickelgren, who died on November 2, 2005, after a longbattle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, studied the time course offorgetting more assiduously and more effectively than anyonesince Hermann Ebbinghaus. In a classic article, Wickelgren(1974) derived an equation that is remarkable in several re-spects, including in its ability to characterize the famous Eb-binghaus (1885/1913) savings function. Under typical conditions,Wickelgren’s power law reduces tom ¼ lð1 þbtÞ

Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not.

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants exhibited greater overconfidence in their ability to recall a Swahili word from a picture than from a translation (Experiments 2-3), and Swahili words were also considered easier to process when paired with pictures rather than translations (Experiment 4). When this overconfidence bias was eliminated through retrieval practice (Experiment 2) and instructions warning participants to not be overconfident (Experiment 3), Swahili words were learned better from pictures than from translations. It appears, therefore, that pictures can facilitate learning of foreign language vocabulary--as long as participants are not too overconfident in the power of a picture to help them learn a new word.