title: Is temporal spacing of tests helpful even when it inflates error rates?
abstract: The occurrence of errors is often thought to impede associative learning. This was tested in 2 studies, each of which involved 2 sessions. In Session 1, subjects learned foreign vocabulary (Experiment 1) or obscure English words (Experiment 2) and received 2 tests (each with corrective feedback) separated by a variable lag. Greater lags drastically reduced performance on the 2nd test. However, they dramatically improved performance in a Session-2 test given 1 day (Experiment 1) or 1 week later (Experiment 2). This pattern held even for items that elicited errors on the 1st test of Day 1. Evidently, the benefit of spacing overwhelms any possible harmful effect of producing errors. The results have clear and nonobvious implications for computer-aided instruction.
authors: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. hpashler@ucsd.edu
authors: Harold
authors: H
authors: Pashler
authors: Gregory
authors: G
authors: Zarow
authors: Baylor
authors: B
authors: Triplett
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D019303:Multilingualism; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology