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untitled Research Article Test-Enhanced Learning Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention Henry L. Roediger, III, and Jeffrey D. Karpicke Washington University in St. Louis ABSTRACT—Taking a memory test not only assesses what one knows, but also enhances later retention, a phenome- non known as the testing effect. We studied this effect with educationally relevant materials and investigated whether testing facilitates learning only because tests offer an op- portunity to restudymaterial. In two experiments, students studied prose passages and took one or three immediate free-recall tests, without feedback, or restudied the mate- rial the same number of times as the students who received tests. Students then took a final retention test 5 min, 2 days, or 1 week later. When the final test was given after 5 min, repeated studying improved recall relative to repeated testing. However, on the delayed tests, prior testing pro- duced substantially greater retention than studying, even though repeated studying increased students’ confidence in their ability to remember thematerial. Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing it. In educational settings, tests are usually considered devices of assessment. Students take tests in class to assess what they have learned and take standardized tests like the SAT to assess their knowledge and aptitude. In many circumstances, such as uni- versity lecture courses, tests are given infrequently (often just two or three times a semester) and are generally perceived as a bother by faculty and students alike. We believe that the neglect of testing in all levels of education is misguided. To state an obvious point, if students know they will be tested regularly (say, once a week, or even every class period), they will study more and will space their studying throughout the semester rather than concentrating it just before exams (see Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, & Kulik, 1991; Leeming, 2002). However, more impor- tant for present purposes, testing has a powerful positive effect on future retention. If students are tested on material and suc- cessfully recall or recognize it, they will remember it better in the future than if they had not been tested. This phenomenon, called the testing effect, has been studied sporadically over a long period of time (e.g., Gates, 1917), but is not well known outside cognitive psychology. Most experiments on the testing effect have been conducted in the verbal learning tradition using word lists (e.g., Hogan & Kintsch, 1971; Izawa, 1967; McDaniel & Masson, 1985; Thompson, Wenger, & Bartling, 1978; Tulving, 1967; Wheeler, Ewers, &Buonanno, 2003) or picture lists (Wheeler &Roediger, 1992) as materials. There have been a few experiments using materials found in educational contexts, beginning with Spitzer (1939; see too Glover, 1989, and McDaniel & Fisher, 1991). However, the title of Glover’s article from 17 years ago still sums up the current state of affairs: ‘‘The ‘testing’ phenomenon: Not gone but nearly forgotten.’’ Our aim in the two experiments reported herewas to investigate the testing effect under educationally relevant conditions, using prose materials and free-recall tests without feedback (somewhat akin to essay tests used in education). Most previous research has used tests involving recognition (like multiple-choice tests) or cued recall (like short-answer tests). A second purpose of our experiments was to determine whether testing facilitates learning beyond the benefits of restudying the material. In some testing- effect experiments, a study-test condition is compared with a study-only condition on a delayed retention test. When the sub- jects in the former condition outperform those in the latter on a final test, one can wonder whether the testing effect is simply due to study-test subjects being reexposed to the material during the test. It is no surprise that students will learn more with two presentations of material rather than one (although some of the word-list experiments cited earlier overcame this problem; see too Carrier & Pashler, 1992; Cull, 2000). To evaluate this restudying explanation of the testing effect, we had students in our control conditions restudy the entire set of material—which should, if anything, bias performance results in favor of this condition, because students who take free-recall tests (without feedback) can only reexperience whatever material they can recall. Students in our experiments studied short prose passages covering general scientific topics. In Experiment 1, they either Address correspondence to Henry L. Roediger, III, Department of Psychology, Washington University, Campus Box 1125, One Brook- ings Dr., St. Louis, MO 63130, e-mail:
[email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 17—Number 3 249Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science took a test on the material or studied it again before taking a final retention test 5 min, 2 days, or 1 week later. In Experiment 2, students studied a passage once and took three tests, studied three times and took one test, or studied the passage four times. They then took a final test 5 min or 1 week later. We predicted that performance on immediate retention tests would increase with the number of study opportunities, because massed prac- tice typically produces short-term benefits (e.g., Balota, Duchek, & Paullin, 1989). However, we predicted that taking tests soon after studying would promote superior retention on delayed tests relative to repeatedly studying the material. This outcome would indicate that testing has positive effects on long- term retention above and beyond any effect of re-presentation of the material during the test. EXPERIMENT 1 Method Subjects One hundred twenty Washington University undergraduates, ages 18 to 24, participated in partial fulfillment of course re- quirements. Materials Two prose passages were selected from the reading compre- hension section of a test-preparation book for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL; Rogers, 2001). Each passage covered a single topic (‘‘The Sun’’ and ‘‘Sea Otters’’), and each was divided into 30 idea units for scoring purposes. The pas- sages were 256 and 275 words in length, respectively. Design A 2 � 3 mixed-factorial design was used. Learning condition (restudy vs. test) was manipulated within subjects, and delay of the final test (5 min, 2 days, or 1 week) was manipulated between subjects. The order of learning conditions (restudy or test) and the order of passages (‘‘The Sun’’ or ‘‘Sea Otters’’) were coun- terbalanced across subjects. Procedure Subjects were tested during two sessions, in small groups (4 or fewer). They were told that Phase 1 consisted of four 7-min periods and that during any given period they would be asked to study one passage for the first time, restudy one of the passages, or take a recall test over one of the passages. During each study period, subjects read one passage for 7 min. During the test period, subjects were given a test sheet with the title of the to-be- recalled passage printed at the top and were asked to write down as much of the material from the passage as they could re- member, without concern for exact wording or correct order. Subjects solved multiplication problems for 2 min between periods and for 5 min after the final period in Phase 1. Phase 2 occurred after a 5-min, 2-day, or 1-week retention interval. In Phase 2, subjects were asked to recall the passages that they had learned in Phase 1. The recall instructions were identical to those given in Phase 1. Each retention test lasted 10 min, and subjects were instructed by the experimenter to draw a line on their test sheets to mark their place after each 1-min interval during the recall periods (Roediger & Thorpe, 1978). At the end of the experiment, subjects were debriefed and thanked for their participation. Results and Discussion Scoring Subjects’ recall responses were scored by giving 1 point for each correctly recalled idea unit (out of 30). Initially, 40 recall tests were scored by two raters, and the Pearson product-moment correlation (r) between their scores was .95. Given the high interrater reliability, the remaining recall tests were scored by one rater. Initial Test On the initial 7-min test, subjects recalled on average 20.9 idea units, or approximately 70% of the passage. No differences were observed for the two passages or for the different counterbal- ancing orders. Final Test Themean proportion of idea units recalled on the final tests after the three retention intervals is shown in Figure 1. The cumu- lative recall data showed that subjects had exhausted their knowledge by the end of the retention interval and are not re- ported here. After 5 min, subjects who had studied the passage Fig. 1. Mean proportion of idea units recalled on the final test after a 5- min, 2-day, or 1-week retention interval as a function of learning condition (additional studying vs. initial testing) in Experiment 1. Error bars rep- resent standard errors of the means. 250 Volume 17—Number 3 Test-Enhanced Learning twice recalled more than subjects who had studied once and taken a recall test. However, this pattern of results was reversed on the delayed tests 2 days and 1 week later. On these tests of long-term retention, subjects who had taken an initial test re- called more than subjects who had only studied the passages. The results were submitted to a 2 � 3 analysis of variance (ANOVA), with learning condition (restudying or testing) and retention interval (5 min, 2 days, or 1 week) as independent variables. This analysis revealed a main effect of testing versus restudying, F(1, 117)5 36.39,Zp 2 5 .24, which indicated that, overall, initial testing produced better final recall than addi- tional studying. Also, the analysis revealed a main effect of re- tention interval, F(2, 117)5 50.34, Zp 2 5 .46, which indicated that forgetting occurred as the retention interval grew longer. However, these main effects were qualified by a significant Learning Condition � Retention Interval interaction, F(2, 117) 5 32.10, Zp 2 5 .35, indicating that restudying produced better performance on the 5-min test, but testing produced better performance on the 2-day and 1-week tests. Post hoc analyses confirmed that on the 5-min retention tests, restudying produced better recall than testing (81% vs. 75%), t(39)5 3.22, d5 0.52. However, the opposite pattern of results was observed on the delayed retention tests. After 2 days, the initially tested group recalled more than the additional-study group (68% vs. 54%), t(39) 5 6.97, d 5 0.95. The benefits of initial testing were also observed after 1 week: The tested group recalled 56%of thematerial, whereas the restudy group recalled only 42%, t(39) 5 6.41, d 5 0.83. Figure 1 depicts another interesting finding: The initially tested group recalled as much on the 1-week retention test as the additional-study group did after only 2 days (the initially tested group actually recalled slightly more)