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A Meta-Analytic Review of the Benefit of Spacing out Retrieval Practice Episodes on Retention

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Abstract

Spaced retrieval practice consists of repetitions of the same retrieval event distributed through time. This learning strategy combines two “desirable difficulties”: retrieval practice and spacing effects. We carried out meta-analyses on 29 studies investigating the benefit of spacing out retrieval practice episodes on final retention. The total dataset was divided into two subsets to investigate two main questions: (1) Does spaced retrieval practice induce better memory retention than massed retrieval practice? (subset 1); (2) Is the expanding spacing schedule superior to the uniform spacing schedule when learning with retrieval practice? (subset 2). Using meta-regression with robust variance estimation, 39 effect sizes were aggregated in subset 1 and 54 in subset 2. Results from subset 1 indicated a strong benefit of spaced retrieval practice in comparison with massed retrieval practice (g = 0.74). Results from subset 2 indicated no significant difference between expanding and uniform spacing schedules of retrieval practice (g = 0.034). Moderator analyses on this subset showed that the number of exposures of an item during retrieval practice explains inconsistencies between studies: the more learners are tested, the more beneficial the expanding schedule is compared with the uniform one. Overall, these results support the advantage of spacing out the retrieval practice episodes on the same content, but do not support the widely held belief that inter-retrieval intervals should be progressively increased until a retention test.

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Change history

  • 29 June 2021

    Springer Nature’s version of this paper was updated to correct the word "retrieval" in the Abstract section that was mistakenly spelled as "retrieBjorkval".

Notes

  1. https://automeris.io/WebPlotDigitizer/.

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Availability of Data and Material

The data from the included studies are available on OSF with the following link: https://osf.io/jbmq4/?view_only=c05f2fcb93bc4d77b68fb11b1561d220.

Funding

We acknowledge funding from Programme d’investissements d’avenir (Efran programme), Agence National de la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-0017, ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France

    Alice Latimier, Hugo Peyre & Franck Ramus

  2. Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, UMRS 1141, Paris, France

    Hugo Peyre

  3. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Robert Debré Hospital, APHP, Paris, France

    Hugo Peyre

Authors
  1. Alice Latimier
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  2. Hugo Peyre
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  3. Franck Ramus
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Contributions

A.L.: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, investigation, formal analysis, writing—original draft preparation. H.P.: methodology, formal analysis, writing—reviewing-editing. F.R.: conceptualization, methodology, supervision, writing—reviewing-editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alice Latimier.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Code Availability

R script for analyses with robumeta package is available on OSF with the following link: https://osf.io/jbmq4/?view_only=c05f2fcb93bc4d77b68fb11b1561d220.

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Sensitivity analysis for subset 1 and subset 2. This consists in varying the assumed within-study effect size correlation (ρ) and observing the impact on the mean effect size (Hedges’ g) and on the estimated between-study variance (Tau2)

Subset 1

ρ = 0

ρ = 0.2

ρ = 0.4

ρ = 0.6

ρ = 0.8

ρ = 1

Mean effect size

1.009

1.009

1.010

1.010

1.010

1.011

Standard error

0.148

0.148

0.148

0.149

0.149

0.149

Tau2

0.204

0.206

0.208

0.211

0.213

0.215

Subset 2

ρ = 0

ρ = 0.2

ρ = 0.4

ρ = 0.6

ρ = 0.8

ρ = 1

Mean effect size

0.0343

0.0343

0.0343

0.0343

0.0343

0.0343

Standard error

0.0626

0.0626

0.0626

0.0626

0.0626

0.0626

Tau2

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

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Latimier, A., Peyre, H. & Ramus, F. A Meta-Analytic Review of the Benefit of Spacing out Retrieval Practice Episodes on Retention. Educ Psychol Rev 33, 959–987 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09572-8

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