How is learned information retrieved

Brain dumps : ask students to write down everything they can remember from a previous lesson. Two things : ask students to retrieve two things they learned at the end of class. Research in real world classrooms has demonstrated that retrieval practice improves learning for:.

Developmental stages preschool, young adults, and older adults. Why does retrieval practice improve learning and reduce forgetting? Learn more from cognitive scientist and founder of retrievalpractice.

Agarwal, Ph. Free Practice Guides Research Reports. What is retrieval practice? Let's focus on getting information "out" of students' heads. The results in the immediate segment 4 recall test showed that prior testing of sections 1—3 increased the number of correctly answered segment 4 questions and reduced source confusions, indicating a forward effect of testing in student learning.

Consistent with the reset-of-encoding view, the results further showed that recall testing helped students sustain high attention to encoding from early to late lecture content, by encouraging task-relevant activities like note taking and discouraging task-irrelevant activities like mind wandering. In addition, the recall testing reduced both test anxiety and subjectively experienced mental effort. Together, these findings demonstrate that the forward effect of testing can enhance student learning in an educational setting.

Following Szpunar et al. Moreover, future work may investigate whether and how students of different ages and students with specific memory or attention deficits can benefit from testing in education. Testing can enhance learning in clinical populations Wilson, Regarding the backward effect of testing, testing of previously studied information has been shown to increase its long-term retention in persons with Alzheimer's disease Camp et al. Participants studied three lists of items, which were pictures of everyday things presented together with their names.

They were asked to remember the items for a final cumulative recall test. All participants were tested immediately on list 3. In the testing condition participants were also tested immediately on lists 1 and 2, whereas in the distractor condition they counted backwards in steps of ones after study of lists 1 and 2. The results showed that testing effects were not restricted to healthy participants. Instead, both the backward and the forward effect of testing were equally present in persons with severe TBI and healthy controls.

Indeed, regarding the forward effect in the immediate list 3 recall test, recall testing of lists 1 and 2 improved list 3 recall and reduced prior-list intrusions in persons with TBI to the same degree as in healthy controls. Apparently, testing can largely reduce memory deficits and enhance learning in persons with severe TBI.

Elaborating on the generalizability of the forward effect to other clinical populations is a high priority for future work. In prior work, memory deficits in persons with TBI, MS, and Alzheimer's disease have been suggested to arise mainly from deficient encoding, and less from deficient retrieval Greene et al.

Complementing such work, future studies may also address patients' retrieval abilities. Testing can enhance learning of misinformation Chan et al. This has been shown in the misinformation paradigm Loftus et al.

In this paradigm, participants witness an event, for instance by watching a video of a crime scene, and next are exposed to a narrative description of the event that contains misinformation on specific detail e.

At test, participants are asked to recall the details of the witnessed event in the video. The typical finding is that the previous presentation of misinformation impairs memory for the details of the original event, indicating that eyewitnesses' memories are malleable and can be influenced by exposure to subsequently presented misinformation.

Examining the effects of testing in the misinformation paradigm, recent laboratory work by Chan and colleagues has shown that recall testing between the encoding of the event and the encoding of the misinformation can increase participants' suggestibility to the misinformation on a final recall test Chan et al.

For instance, Chan et al. After watching the video, participants either took an immediate cued-recall test on specific details about the video or completed an unrelated distractor task. After that, all participants listened to an audio narrative that described the video, without being warned that the narrative contains misinformation.

Finally, participants took a final cued-recall test that was identical to the immediate recall test. The results in the final recall test showed that immediate testing enhanced incorrect recall of misinformation, indicating that immediate testing makes witnesses susceptible to misinformation. The finding by Chan et al.

According to this effect, immediate testing should have enhanced memory for the witnessed event and thus reduced suggestibility to misinformation. This is not what the results showed. The finding, however, is perfectly in line with what the forward effect of testing predicts. According to this effect, immediate testing enhances encoding of the subsequently presented misinformation and thus increases suggestibility to the misinformation on the final recall test.

The generalizability of laboratory effects to real-life scenarios needs to be tested. The review of the existing literature on the forward effect of testing indicates that, within the lab-based studies in the memory literature, the effect is a replicable phenomenon. There is also evidence that, just like the backward effect of testing, the forward effect of testing may be applied to educational and clinical practice, showing that recall testing can enhance student learning and reduce learning deficits in people with severe TBI.

Research further showed that the effect pertains to both veridical information and misinformation. Thus, the existing literature on the forward effect of testing already provides important insights into how recall testing can affect learning and memory.

Further important research questions should be addressed in the future. First, the prior laboratory work used recall tests both in the immediate and the final test phases, and future work may rather use multiple choice, short answer, or recognition testing to examine whether the effect generalizes to other test formats more often used in educational practice. Second, following the laboratory study with educational materials by Szpunar et al. Fourth, laboratory work showed that different forms of retrieval—e.

Therefore, discovering exactly what forms of retrieval and what processes at retrieval promote the forward effect of testing is a high priority for future work. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Dunlosky, J. Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Public Interest 14, 4— However, recent research has shown that in some situations interim testing can lead to negative effects. Interim testing motivates people to exert more effort to the encoding of new materials. The results showed that the Interim Test group correctly recalled more names than the Interim Restudy group, whereas the recall of professions showed the reverse pattern: The Interim Restudy group recalled more professions than the Interim Test group.

In recent follow-up research, Davis and Chan 51 proposed that the interim test on face—name pairs led the Interim Test group to continue to focus on learning the names when they were shown the face—name—profession pairs, as the prior interim test made them aware of the difficulty of remembering the face—name pairs.

Davis and Chan 51 showed that this negative effect can be completely reversed. In their Experiment 4, they separated the interim test on face—name pairs and the encoding of face—profession pairs. Following initial study of the face—name pairs, an Interim Restudy group restudied all face—name pairs one-by-one, whereas an Interim Test group was shown the faces one-by-one and was asked to recall their names, and corrective feedback was given in the interim test.

Then both groups were asked to study the face—profession pairs, and in this phase, no names were shown alongside. At the end of this study phase, participants took a final test in which they were asked to recall the names and professions in response to the faces. The results showed that, in the final test, the Interim Test group recalled more professions than the Interim Restudy group. Hence the Davis and Chan 51 study showed that separate presentation of tested and new information can not only eliminate the borrowed time effect the finding that interim testing on face—name pairs impairs the learning of face—profession pairs when face—name—profession information was presented simultaneously but can also induce a positive forward testing effect interim testing on face—name pairs enhances the learning of face—profession pairs when the associations are separated.

Unfortunately, the positive testing effect for the face—name pairs was also reversed: now testing impaired memory for the names relative to restudy. In a more recent study, Davis et al. Finn 54 reported finding that, contrary to the predictions of the borrowed time hypothesis, giving participants unlimited time for test and review of feedback, thereby minimizing the need to borrow time, failed to eliminate retrieval-impaired learning of new information. While time borrowing may account for some of the data, it is therefore unlikely to be a complete explanation for retrieval-impaired learning of complementary associations for other possible explanations about why interim testing may impair learning of new information, see refs.

The need for further research concerning this question is pressing. Clearly, there will be many occasions in the classroom when an instructor asks students to recall a piece of studied information e. The finding that impairment of new learning is greatest in situations characterized by frequent task switching suggests that it may not pose a serious problem in classroom situations, where such frequent switching is unlikely, but not enough is yet known about the boundary conditions of the effect to make firm recommendations regarding classroom instruction.

Table 2 depicts some directions for future research to explore. As discussed above, more work is needed to investigate the mechanisms underlying the forward testing effect and individual differences in the magnitude of this effect.

For example, older adults, like younger children, have difficulty in inhibiting PI. Does the forward testing effect generalize to older adults? To date, little neuroscientific research has been conducted to explore the human brain networks involved in the forward testing effect. The backward testing effect has been repeatedly demonstrated in real classrooms but the forward testing effect has not been yet.

Of high priority for future research is to test whether the forward effect generalizes to classroom settings. Future research could profitably explore the long-term outcomes of the effect.

Some educators even propose to minimize testing in the classroom as they think it is time-consuming 7 and scoring of tests excessively demanding. However, numerous previous studies have confirmed the reliability of the backward testing effect in laboratories and real classrooms, even with low-stakes quizzes. Therefore, the forward and backward testing effects, jointly, make a strong case for learners and instructors to administer interim tests or quizzes during learning.

Interim testing can not only enhance learning and retrieval of new information but also prevent the build-up of PI. For example, in a geography class, students may need to master the basic information e. Students may confuse information relating to different countries.

Therefore, understanding how to prevent the build-up of PI is critical for instructors and learners in such situations. As Yang et al. Therefore, instructors and learners are encouraged to administer interim tests to prevent the build-up of PI. We again warn instructors to be cautious about this proposal, however, because it is unknown whether release from PI, induced by interim testing, is long lasting. To summarize, interim testing is a powerful technique in optimizing learning of new information.

Studies using a variety of educational materials have shown that the forward testing effect is a robust phenomenon. Interim testing can be used to enhance the learning of new single items, paired-associates, complex materials, and concepts categories.

It not only benefits memorization of specific content but also boosts information integration, producing superior knowledge organization. The forward testing effect is not limited to instructor-paced situations but also generalizes to self-paced ones; it is not limited to healthy individuals but also generalizes to individuals with brain injury; it is not limited to the same type of material but is also transferable to different types of material and different test formats ; it not only enhances learning and retrieval of new information but also prevents the build-up of PI.

Both variations in the encoding and retrieval phases may contribute to the forward testing effect. Although interim testing may impair learning of new information when tested and new materials are presented together, this negative effect can be eliminated and reversed by the separate presentation of tested and new information. Further investigations on aspects of this important effect, which are currently poorly understood, are needed.

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