Is Temporal Spacing of Tests Helpful Even When It Inflates Error Rates?

Pashler, Harold; Zarow, Gregory J.; Triplett, B. B.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.29.6.1051

Cited by 79 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Errorless learning has had a long and influential history in psychology (e.g., Guthrie, 1952;Skinner, 1958). Although it is an idea that derives mainly from findings in studies of nonhuman animal learning, it has influenced suggestions about best practices for educators as well (for a discussion, see Pashler, Zarow, & Triplett, 2003), and it is used frequently and successfully in patient populations (e.g., Evans et al, 2000).…”

Section: Are the Effects Of An Unsuccessful Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Making such a comparison is difficult, however, because of item-selection effects: In a test condition, it is easy to select items that were not recalled successfully (i.e., nonretrievable items), but selecting nonretrievable items is not possible in a read-only condition because there is no recall test. As Pashler et al (2003) …”

Section: Are the Effects Of An Unsuccessful Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning.

Kornell

Hays

Bjork

2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

367

492

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Taking tests enhances learning. But what happens when one cannot answer a test question-does an unsuccessful retrieval attempt impede future learning or enhance it? The authors examined this question using materials that ensured that retrieval attempts would be unsuccessful. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked fictional general-knowledge questions (e.g., "What peace treaty ended the Calumet War?"). In Experiments 3-6, participants were shown a cue word (e.g., whale) and were asked to guess a weak associate (e.g., mammal); the rare trials on which participants guessed the correct response were excluded from the analyses. In the test condition, participants attempted to answer the question before being shown the answer; in the read-only condition, the question and answer were presented together. Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhanced learning with both types of materials. These results demonstrate that retrieval attempts enhance future learning; they also suggest that taking challenging tests-instead of avoiding errors-may be one key to effective learning.

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Section: Are the Effects Of An Unsuccessful Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are the Effects Of An Unsuccessful Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning.

Kornell

Hays

Bjork

2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

367

492

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our results have only indirect implications for such programs, but they suggest that conditions that produce the fewest errors during learning (like massed practice in Experiments 1 and 2) can lead to very poor long-term retention. Delaying an initial test, thereby making an initial retrieval attempt more difficult, leads to more errors on the test but also produces the biggest gains in long-term retention, especially when feedback is given to correct errors committed on the delayed first test (see too Pashler et al, 2003). We think that comparison of specific schedules of spaced practice may be important for determining which memory training techniques are most effective, and on the basis of our results, equally spaced practice appears to be more effective than expanding retrieval.…”

Section: Implications For Memory Training and For Enhancing Student Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in our study and in Spitzer's, students were not given feedback after the tests. If students receive feedback after tests, as they would if they were testing themselves and spacing their practice over several days in preparation for an upcoming exam, then a delayed first test might benefit learning more than an immediate test, despite poorer performance on the delayed test (see too Pashler et al, 2003). The issue of what the optimal delay should be before a first retrieval attempt to promote learning of different types of materials awaits future research.…”

Section: Implications For Memory Training and For Enhancing Student Lmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Karpicke¹,

Roediger²

2007

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

269

299

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Expanding retrieval practice (T. K. Landauer & R. A. Bjork, 1978) is regarded as a superior technique for promoting long-term retention relative to equally spaced retrieval practice. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors found that expanding retrieval practice of vocabulary word pairs produced short-term benefits 10 min after learning, conceptually replicating Landauer and Bjork's results. However, equally spaced retrieval produced superior retention 2 days later. This pattern occurred both with and without feedback after test trials. In Experiment 3, the 1st test occurred immediately or after a brief delay, and repeated tests were expanding or equally spaced. Delaying the first test improved long-term retention, regardless of how the repeated tests were spaced. The important factor for promoting long-term retention is delaying initial retrieval to make it more difficult, as is done in equally spaced retrieval but not in expanding retrieval. Expanding the interval between repeated tests had little effect on long-term retention in 3 experiments.

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“…To the extent that spacing induces forgetting, it also increases the likelihood of recalling incorrect information. And although research has shown that when learners are given feedback, the benefits of spacing can overwhelm the potentially harmful effect of generating incorrect information (e.g., Pashler, Zarow, & Triplett, 2003), when feedback is not given, the repeated retrieval of incorrect information may propagate those errors into the future (e.g., Toppino & Brochin, 1989). By testing immediately, and then systematically introducing spacing between repeated tests, it is possible and likely that the number of errors can be minimized.…”

Section: Error-reduction Benefits Of Expanding Retrieval Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing retrieval as a learning event: When and why expanding retrieval practice enhances long-term retention

2010

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244Tests are commonly used in educational settings as a means of assessing the state of a student's knowledge. Research has shown, however, that tests do much more than measure learning; they also enhance learning (e.g., Bjork, 1975Bjork, , 1988Carrier & Pashler, 1992;Glover, 1989;Hogan & Kintsch, 1971;McDaniel & Masson, 1985;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b;Spitzer, 1939;Tulving, 1967;Wheeler & Roediger, 1992). Not only does information that has been tested become more recallable in the future than it would have been otherwise, that information, if retrieved, becomes more recallable than if such a test was replaced by an additional study opportunity. Testing as pedagogy, therefore, versus as assessment, seems to have great potential for application in training and educational contexts (see, e.g., Bjork, 1994a;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a).An important aspect of tests as learning events is that the deeper, more difficult, and more complex retrieval is, the more powerful that retrieval will be in facilitating successful retrievals in the future (e.g., Bjork, 1975;Whitten & Bjork, 1977). Tests that require learners to engage in deep and elaborative retrieval processes are likely to be highly effective; tests that require only superficial processing-such as, in the limit, retrieving very recent information from short-term memory-are not. One simple way of making tests more difficult-and therefore inducing a deeper level of processing-is by delaying the time between learning and test. When tests are given immediately, learners are able to access information from memory in a way that affords little or no benefit above and beyond simply having such information re-presented to them or even beyond not having the information tested or re-presented. When tests are delayed, however, and the tobe-tested information has become less accessible, learners are forced to engage in the type of processing that promotes learning and long-term retention (e.g., Cull, 2000;Glover, 1989;Jacoby, 1978;Modigliani, 1976;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b;Whitten & Bjork, 1977). Said differently, delayed tests constitute better practice for later recall because they exercise more of the processes needed to succeed on a later test (for an embellishment of that argument, see Bjork, 1988).With the benefit of a delayed test, however, also comes a potential danger. In order for an item to profit from being tested, the learner must be able to successfully retrieve that item from memory, and the likelihood of doing so decreases with the delay between learning and test. Thus, there is a dilemma: If the delay between learning and test is short, retrieval is likely to succeed but to be ineffectual; if the delay is long, retrieval is unlikely to succeed and, hence, also to be ineffectual. One potential way of dealing with this dilemma is by implementing an expanding schedule of tests. In order to ensure successful retrieval, initial tests should be relatively immediate, and then, as the to-be-learned information gains strength in memory, University of California, Los...

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Is Temporal Spacing of Tests Helpful Even When It Inflates Error Rates?

Cited by 79 publications

References 29 publications

Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning.

Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning.

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Optimizing retrieval as a learning event: When and why expanding retrieval practice enhances long-term retention

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