Does retrieval practice beat rereading when key information is matched?
Retrieval practice with feedback improved transfer over rereading, but much of the advantage shrank when rereading also highlighted the information needed for the final test.
Source
The Testing Effect and Far Transfer: The Role of Exposure to Key Information
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Two controlled repeated-measures experiments; retention interval varied in Experiment 1
- N
- Experiment 1: 56; Experiment 2: 54 analysed after one exclusion
- Population
- Psychology undergraduates at Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Outcome
- Correct answers to transfer questions applying passage information in a new domain
- Comparison
- Retrieval with feedback versus plain rereading; Experiment 2 also matched key information through statements
- Test delay
- 5 minutes or 1 week in Experiment 1; 1 week in Experiment 2
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Inspect source passages
Does retrieval practice beat rereading when key information is matched?
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
Who participated and how large was the analysed sample?
Fifty-six people participated in the study and were rewarded with course credits.
What is the main limit on applying this result?
That is, it becomes clear that the effect of retrieval practice might be partly attributed to the focused exposure to key information (i.e., the feedback).
What they did
Two experiments used psychology undergraduates: 56 participants in the first and 54 analysed in the second. After reading passages, participants either reread or answered cued-recall questions with feedback over three relearning cycles. The first experiment tested transfer after five minutes or one week. The second added a rereading-plus-key-statements condition and tested transfer after one week, making the comparison more demanding than plain rereading.
What they found
Retrieval practice outperformed plain rereading at both retention intervals in the first experiment. After one week in the second experiment, mean correct transfer responses were 64% for retrieval practice, 53% for rereading plus key statements, and 40% for plain rereading. Retrieval retained an advantage over the stronger comparison, but it was smaller: focused exposure to the needed information accounted for an important part of the original benefit.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Study time and the timing of exposures were not fully equated. The small, specific undergraduate samples and selected passage questions cannot establish gains on every school exam or every kind of far transfer. The study does not show that rereading is useless, that retrieval alone without feedback produces the same result, or that highlighting all text recreates the targeted key-statements condition.
Key terms
- Retention interval
- The time between the last learning opportunity and the outcome test.
- Comparison condition
- The alternative study activity or exposure against which a result is assessed.
- Generalisation
- Whether a result applies to other populations, materials, settings or outcomes.
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Quiz yourself
Which comparison was used in this study?
Common questions
How does retrieval practice compare with rereading?
Retrieval with feedback performed better here, but the advantage was smaller when rereading included the same key information.
Did it measure only memorisation?
No. The final questions required applying information in a new knowledge domain, although this is still a specific laboratory transfer task.
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