Abstract
A testing effect occurs when taking a test leads to more durable memory for tested materials, relative to restudying them during the same period of time. In the current study, we examined whether incidental and intentional restudy/testing practice modes during a practice phase would modulate the contribution of recollection-based and familiarity-based retrieval in a final recognition test. Both practice strategy (restudy versus testing) and practice mode (incidental vs. intentional) were manipulated between participants (N = 160). The restudy and testing groups performed a semantic rating task and a word fragment completion task, respectively, in the incidental condition or in the intentional condition. Only those participants in the intentional condition were instructed to recall or restudy the targets. All participants went through two study–practice cycles that involved two different sets of targets. After the second cycle, participants performed a list-discrimination recognition test that could assess the contributions of recollection-based and familiarity-based retrieval on test-enhanced learning. The testing effect occurred in the intentional condition, but not in the incidental condition. Relative to intentional restudy, intentional testing boosted recollection, but not familiarity, demonstrating the role of recollection in test-enhanced learning.
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Notes
Twenty students from the same population were asked to complete 103 fragments, which appeared with their word cues (e.g., hard-_o_k), with the first word that came to mind that was related to the cue. Each fragment could be fitted with two targets (e.g., work and rock for hard-_o_k). Based on their responses, we chose 55 of 103 sets appended in Jacoby (1996) that yielded >.67 completion baserate for one target and <.33 completion baserate for the other (e.g., for hard-_o_k, the baseline was .91 for work and .09 for rock). We then asked three other students to screen out the cues or targets that they were unfamiliar. The set was removed if any part of it (i.e., the cue or either of the targets) was marked as unfamiliar. This screened out 17 more sets and the remaining 38 sets were chosen as experimental stimuli. No participant in this norming study participated in the experiment proper.
We also computed the estimates of recollection and familiarity based on the extended measurement model in Verkoeijen et al. (2011) and obtained a similar pattern of findings. For the sake of simplicity, we only reported the estimates of recollection and familiarity based on the same procedure as used in Chan and McDermott (2007).
Data of 5 participants in the incidental testing group were excluded in this comparison as they only typed in the missing letters of the test fragments. Hence, their RTs might not be comparable with the others who typed in the whole words in the generation task.
The results based on the full set of data showed a lower List 1 false alarm rate in the testing group than in the restudy group and an equivalent List 2 hit rate in both groups. However, after excluding trials with RTs being longer than 4 s, the List 2 hit rate of the testing group increased from .84 to .89 and the List 1 false alarm rate of the testing group increased from .28 to .30, such that the restudy versus testing difference in List 2 hit rate became significant, whereas the restudy versus testing difference in List 1 false alarm was no longer significant. It is unclear why removing the testing group’s slower responses in the practice phase could increase the List 2 hit rates and List 1 false alarm rates. Nonetheless, the conclusion that the intentional testing group enhanced d′ and recollection relative to the intentional study group remained identical after equating the study times for intentional restudy and testing groups.
The pattern of the findings remained the same if we included participants’ performance of the recall/generation task as a covariate in the ANOVAs.
We obtained the same results in the following analyses after including the performance of recall/generation task as covariate in ANOVA, or excluding trials that participants failed to recall/generate in the practice phase.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Faculty and Departmental Supportive Fund and Direct Grant for Research (Project no. 2080088), The Chinese University of Hong Kong. We thank Kit W. Cho, Jeffrey Karpicke, Bruce Milliken, and Katherine Rawson for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
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Pu, X., Tse, CS. The influence of intentional versus incidental retrieval practices on the role of recollection in test-enhanced learning. Cogn Process 15, 55–64 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0580-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0580-2