Optimising retention through multiple study opportunities over days: The benefit of an expanding schedule of repetitions

Abstract

Few studies have investigated how scheduling repeated studies of the same material over several days influences its subsequent retention. The study-phase retrieval hypothesis predicts that, under these circumstances, expanding intervals between repetitions will promote the greatest likelihood that the participant will be reminded of previous occurrences of the item, thus leading to a benefit for subsequent recall. In the present article, participants studied vocabulary pairs that were repeated according to one of three schedules. In the expanding schedule, pairs were presented on days 1, 2 and 13; in the uniform schedule, on days 1, 7 and 13; and in the contracting schedule, on days 1, 12 and 13. Cued-recall was assessed after a retention interval (RI) of 2, 6 or 13 days. Consistent with predictions, the expanding schedule generally led to better performance than the other schedules. However, further analyses suggested that the benefit of an expanding schedule may be greater when the RI is longer.

Spacing Repetitions Over Long Timescales: A Review and a Reconsolidation Explanation

“…Other studies have not used as many spacing and retention delays as Cepeda et al (2008), but the finding that the optimal spacing interval changes depending on the retention delay has been reported for re-reading texts (Rawson and Kintsch, 2005; Verkoeijen et al, 2008; Rawson, 2012), word-pairs (Bahrick and Phelphs, 1987; Küpper-Tetzel and Erdfelder, 2012; Küpper-Tetzel et al, 2014b; Gerbier et al, 2015) and for remembering vocabulary (Küpper-Tetzel et al, 2014a). One interesting question yet to be directly addressed is what effect increasing the number of re-learning sessions has on the inverted-U curve.…”

Learners’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Spaced Learning Schedule in L2 Vocabulary Learning

“…1 English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran advantageous effects of spaced practice over massed practice in word learning (e.g., Bloom & Shuell, 1981;Gerbier, Toppino, & Koenig, 2015;Goossens et al, 2012;Kornell, 2009;Schuetze, 2015;Sobel et al, 2011;Zigterman, Simone, & Bell, 2015). For instance, Kornell (2009) reported an experiment in which undergraduate students learned words using flash cards.…”

Distributed Practice and Retrieval Practice in Primary School Vocabulary Learning: A Multi‐classroom Study

“…Thus, there is some evidence that distributed practice is effective for children who are learning new vocabulary. Furthermore, only a few studies have investigated distributed practice with lags of 1 week or more, which is more consistent with how vocabulary exercises are distributed over time in primary school education (e.g., Gerbier, Toppino, & Koenig, 2014;Kang, Lindsey, Mozer, & Pashler, 2014;Küpper-Tetzel, Erdfelder, & Dickhäuser, 2014;Küpper-Tetzel, Kapler, & Wiseheart, 2014). However, the studies using longer time intervals were conducted in the laboratory or in secondary school education; thus, the question remains whether these results can be translated to primary school education.…”