A Test of the Efficiency of Study and a Study on the Efficacy of Tests

Abstract

The situation of interest in the present thesis was one where students have a limited amount of time to learn by themselves a certain amount of information. The main question was how students might get the most out of such a limited amount of time. In the first part of the thesis the effect of study time distribution on learning and retention was investigated. The second part of the thesis investigated the effect of testing on long-term retention. Overall, our findings suggest that learners can profit greatly from the right set of conditions. First of all, we found that, when time to learn is limited, it matters a great deal how one puts to use the available amount of time. The pacing of study trials during learning can have a profound effect on both immediate and delayed recall performance. Secondly, we found that testing during learning can also have a substantial effect on the long-term retention of paired associates. Extending previous findings, we show that the benefits of repeated testing during initial learning are not just limited to enhanced recall on a delayed test, but also extend to the enhancement of delayed relearning of (forgotten) information. However, we also provide evidence suggesting that there might be limits to the benefits of testing. Our results indicate that the testing effect might be less robust for learning more complex materials (such as texts) and we propose that the coherence of to-be-learned materials might be a possible moderator of the testing effect.