Does incorrect guessing impair fact learning?

Abstract

Taking a test has been shown to produce enhanced retention of the retrieved information. On tests, however, students often encounter questions the answers for which they are unsure. Should they guess anyway, even if they are likely to answer incorrectly? Or are errors engrained, impairing subsequent learning of the correct answer? We sought to answer this question in 3 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects read 80 obscure facts (e.g., “Where is Disko Island? Greenland”) and then took a cued recall test. When a subject reported being unable to answer a question, on a randomly chosen half of those questions the computer program insisted upon a guess. Corrective feedback was provided either immediately (Experiment 1) or after a delay (Experiment 2). Forced guessing did not affect subjects' performance on a final test given 1 day later. We extended the investigation to more complex material in Experiment 3. Subjects saw a question (e.g., “Why do ice cubes often pop as they melt in your drink?”) and its answer, but for half of the questions, subjects did not see the answer until they first provided a plausible explanation. On a test administered either on the same day or 1 week later, recall performance was again unaffected by a prior wrong guess.

Learning new vocabulary in German: the effects of inferring word meanings, type of feedback, and time of test

“…In fact, the former group retained more of the correct translations over time, despite the fact that they had less overall exposure to the correct answers and inferred the wrong meanings of the words at a rate of nearly 80% during reading. Thus, contrary to concerns that have been raised by learning theorists in the behaviorist tradition (e.g., Guthrie, 1942;Skinner, 1958), producing errors during learning does not appear to impair memory for the correct answer, as long as corrective feedback is provided (e.g., see also Kang, Pashler, Cepeda, Rohrer, Carpenter, & Mozer, 2011).…”

Failure to learn from feedback underlies word learning difficulties in toddlers at risk for autism

“…The literature on how children update initially incorrect choices is still scarce. Interestingly, and against expectations, in a study investigating learning in typically developing older children, performance in a fact-acquisition task was not affected by initial incorrect guessing (Kang, Pashler, Cepeda, Rohrer, Carpenter & Mozer, 2011), suggesting that self-generated hypotheses are typically easily overwritten by explicitly taught information, at least in typical populations. The same can be seen here in low-risk controls, who reach similar performance levels after feedback, for both initially correct and incorrect choices (Figure 4).…”

Attempting to answer a meaningful question enhances subsequent learning even when feedback is delayed.

“…Thus, there was no indication that final test accuracy was worse following Session 1 commission errors than following Session 1 omission errors. This flnding corresponds to Kang et al's (2011) flnding that forcing people to guess the answer to a trivia question, versus letting them decide not to answer, did not affect learning.…”