Across 3 experiments, we investigated the factors that dictate when taking a test improves subsequent memory performance (the testing effect). In Experiment 1, participants retrieving a set of targets during a retrieval practice phase ultimately recalled fewer of those targets compared with a group of participants who studied the targets twice, a negative testing effect. In Experiments 2 and 3, theoretically motivated modifications to the basic design of Experiment 1 reversed this pattern, demonstrating the more typical positive testing effect. The results from all 3 experiments were predicted by the multifactor account, an explanatory account applied to the generation effect (improved memory for self-generated material), which details why generation typically improves memory, as well as those conditions under which generation can impair memory performance. These results suggest the testing effect and the generation effect may be understood within a common framework.

There are but a handful of experimental or quasi-experimental studies comparing student outcomes from flipped or inverted classrooms to more traditional lecture formats. In the current study, I present cumulative exam performance and student evaluation data from two sections of a statistics course I recently taught: one a traditional lecture (N = 19) and the other a flipped class (N = 24). Independent samples t-tests revealed students in the flipped classroom outperformed their lecture peers by more than a letter grade on the final exam. Further, these students were more satisfied with the course overall, a novel finding in this burgeoning area of research. This latter point, I argue, is likely due to the strong cohesion between the in-class and out-of-class content.

Though retrieving information typically results in improved memory on a subsequent test (the testing effect). Peterson and Mulligan (2013) outlined the conditions under which retrieval practice results in poorer recall relative to restudy, a phenomenon dubbed the negative testing effect. The item-specificrelational account proposes that this occurs when retrieval disrupts interitem relational encoding despite enhancing item-specific information. Four experiments examined the negative testing effect, showing the following: (a) The basic phenomenon is replicable in free recall; (b) it extends to category-cued recall; (c) it converts to a positive testing effect when the final test is recognition, a test heavily reliant on item-specific information; (d) the negative testing effect in recall, robust in a pure list design, reverses to a positive testing effect in a mixed-list design; and (_e) more generally, the present testing manipulation interacts with experimental design, such that an initially negative effect becomes positive or an initially positive effect becomes larger as the design changes from pure-list to mixed-list. The breadth of results fits well within the item-specific-relational framework and provides evidence against 2 alternative accounts. Finally, this research indicates that the testing effect shares important similarities with the generation effect and other similar memory phenomena.

Do students learn better with material that is perceptually hard to process? While evidence is mixed, recent claims suggest that placing materials in Sans Forgetica, a perceptually difficultto-process typeface, has positive impacts on student learning. Given the weak evidence for other similar perceptual disfluency effects, we examined the mnemonic effects of Sans Forgetica more closely in comparison to other learning strategies across three preregistered experiments. In Experiment 1, participants studied weakly related cue-target pairs with targets presented in either Sans Forgetica or with missing letters (e.g., cue: G_RL, the generation effect). Cued recall performance showed a robust effect of generation, but no Sans Forgetica memory benefit. In Experiment 2, participants read an educational passage about ground water with select sentences presented in either Sans Forgetica typeface, yellow pre-highlighting, or unmodified. Cued recall for select words was better for pre-highlighted information than an unmodified pure reading condition. Critically, presenting sentences in Sans Forgetica did not elevate cued recall compared to an unmodified pure reading condition or a pre-highlighted condition. In Experiment 3, individuals did not have better discriminability for Sans Forgetica relative to a fluent condition in an old-new recognition test. Our findings suggest that Sans Forgetica really is forgettable.

When eyewitnesses see a crime, they often do so under physiological stress. Research suggests that stress disrupts memory accuracy, but less is known about whether stress impacts the relationship between confidence and accuracy. Whereas researchers generally agree that pristine encoding and retrieval conditions lead to a strong relationship between the two (Wixted & Wells, 2017), how violations of pristine conditions affect the relationship is unclear.In two experiments, participants encoded faces either under physiological stress (via a cold pressor task) or under control conditions. Participants were later given a recognition memory test for the faces and provided confidence judgments in their old/new decisions. As expected, stress impaired face recognition accuracy. However, we observed similar confidence-accuracy relationships regardless of stress condition. Though participants in the stress condition were less accurate in their identifications overall, they had the metacognitive awareness to scale back their confidence judgments.