The Testing Effect in the Lecture Hall: Does it Transfer to Content Studied but Not Practiced?

Abstract

Background Practice tests have been shown to be an effective means to foster long-term retention in higher education, at least compared to restudying (i.e., the testing effect). Objective The present study replicated and extended prior research by examining whether and to what extent the positive effects of testing on long-term retention in a typical psychology lecture transfer to content presented only during initial learning (and not practiced). Method Using a within-subjects design, we alternated post-lecture multiple-choice practice tests and restudying opportunities in two psychology classes ( N = 67). One week after the final lecture session of a cycle of six weekly lecture sessions, retention of learning content was assessed by comparing performance on questions referring to content practiced via testing, encountered via restudying, or unreviewed. Results We found a testing effect for practiced content, whereas no transfer effect occurred for untested content from the same lecture sessions. Conclusion These results show that the testing effect is a powerful learning tool, but also suggest a possible boundary condition pertaining only to explicitly tested content. Teaching Implications Practice testing should be integrated regularly in higher education courses to foster long-term retention for a final test. However, educators should take care that important content is fully covered in practice tests.

Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: A Working Memory Dependent Dual-Process Model of the Testing Effect

“…However, an agreement on how individual differences affect the benefits of testing has not been reached. For instance, previous research has found that tests are instrumental in improving the performance of later recall irrespective of prior knowledge (Buchin & Mulligan, 2022;Cogliano et al, 2019;Glaser & Richter, 2023) and personality characteristics (Bertilsson et al, 2017), whereas people with relatively low-level intelligence can fail to benefit from taking retrieval practice when the task is difficult (Minear et al, 2018;Wenzel & Reinhard, 2019) and students with higher academic achievements benefit more from retrieval practice (Carpenter et al, 2016). Moreover, the controversy over the applicability of the testing effect across different individuals reached its peak when it comes to working memory capacity (WMC) (Table 1).…”