Retrieval practice enhances learning of short passages, but its effectiveness for authentic educational materials such as textbook chapters is not well established. In the current experiment, students studied a 40-page textbook chapter on biology. Retrieval practice with correct-answer feedback was manipulated within subjects: some questions appeared only after a chapter section, others only after the whole chapter, and yet others at both times. Two groups served as controls: the reread group read the feedback presented in the retrieval practice condition, and the other group simply read the chapter once. Students took a final test two days later. Practicing retrieval resulted in greater recall relative to the two control groups. On the final test, the two single testing conditions produced comparable benefits, but testing twice produced the greatest benefit. Retrieval practice is effective in learning from authentic text material and placement of the initial test does not matter.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13421-022-01329-8.

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