Shana K. Carpenter’s research while affiliated with Oregon State University and other places

Aims: We tested whether combining constructive learning prompts with retrieval practice (constructive retrieval) positively affects delayed learning outcomes (factual knowledge, comprehension), metacognitive accuracy, and motivation. Sample & methods: Undergraduate students (N = 152) learned from a video-recorded lecture, and then engaged in follow-up learning activities involving retrieval practice, restudy, elaboration, or a combination of retrieval practice with elaboration. We ensured that initial retrieval success was high and that all groups had the same expectations about the nature of content to be tested. We assessed both factual knowledge and comprehension, as well as the respective indicators of metacognitive-monitoring accuracy (metamemory, metacomprehension). We assessed self-efficacy and situational interest as motivational variables. Results: In a one-week-delayed posttest, elaboration improved factual knowledge and comprehension. This pattern held whether learners just elaborated or additionally engaged in retrieval practice. Having students self-generate their own examples during retrieval practice improved comprehension, but merely letting students retrieve experimenter-provided examples did not. Students' self-reported mental effort mediated the factual knowledge benefits of retrieval practice. The number of students' self-generated elaborations mediated comprehension benefits. Students engaging in constructive retrieval while learning revealed the highest metacognitive-monitoring accuracy in factual knowledge and comprehension. We found no differences between conditions regarding situational interest and self-efficacy. Motivation to reuse the respective learning strategies was higher in all conditions compared to restudy. Conclusion: Constructive retrieval seems advantageous when considering its benefits on learning outcomes and metacognition. When working on retrieval tasks, students only profited from self-generated, but not from provided , examples with respect to comprehension.

Testing students on information that they do not know might seem like a fruitless endeavor. After all, why give anyone a test that they are guaranteed to fail because they have not yet learned the material? Remarkably, a growing body of research indicates that such testing—formally known as prequestioning or pretesting—can benefit learning if there is an opportunity to study the correct answers afterwards. This prequestioning effect or pretesting effect has been successfully demonstrated with a variety of learning materials, despite many erroneous responses being generated on initial tests, and in conjunction with text materials, videos, lectures, and/or correct answer feedback. In this review, we summarize the emerging evidence for prequestioning and pretesting effects on memory and transfer of learning. Uses of pre-instruction testing in the classroom, theoretical explanations, and other considerations are addressed. The evidence to date indicates that prequestioning and pretesting can often enhance learning, but the extent of that enhancement may vary due to differences in procedure or how learning is assessed. The underlying cognitive mechanisms, which can be represented by a three-stage framework, appear to involve test-induced changes in subsequent learning behaviors and possibly other processes. Further research is needed to clarify moderating factors, theoretical issues, and best practices for educational applications.

Over 100 years of research shows that retrieval practice is highly effective for enhancing student learning. When managing their own study behaviors, however, students tend to avoid using retrieval practice as a way of learning. Understanding and improving students’ study decisions is important given the increasingly autonomous nature of educational experiences that require students to initiate and regulate their own learning. This review summarizes the emerging research on interventions designed to increase students’ decisions to use retrieval practice. Informing students about the benefits of retrieval, and even providing opportunities to directly experience retrieval, are not sufficient for getting students to engage with retrieval when they have the choice. However, reducing the effort and errors involved in retrieval, and providing students direct performance feedback on their own learning benefits associated with retrieval, can increase students’ decisions to use it. The small but growing literature on multifaceted interventions also shows some promise for increasing students’ decisions to use retrieval practice in their courses as a result of learning about its benefits, planning how to use it, practicing it over time, and reflecting on the outcomes. Suggestions are offered for how this research informs straightforward ways that teachers might encourage students to use retrieval practice in their own learning.

Testing students on information that they do not know might seem like a fruitless endeavor. After all, why give anyone a test that they are guaranteed to fail because they have not yet learned the material? Remarkably, a growing body of research indicates that such testing—formally known as prequestioning or pretesting—can benefit learning if there is an opportunity to study the correct answers afterwards. This prequestioning effect or pretesting effect has been successfully demonstrated with a variety of learning materials, in various settings, despite many erroneous responses being generated on initial tests, and in conjunction with text materials, videos, lectures, and/or correct answer feedback. In this review, we summarize the emerging evidence for prequestioning and pretesting effects on memory and transfer of learning. Uses of pre-instruction testing in the classroom, theoretical explanations, metacognitive factors, and other considerations are addressed. The evidence to date indicates that prequestioning and pretesting can often enhance learning, but the extent of that enhancement may vary due to differences in procedure or how learning is assessed. The underlying cognitive mechanisms, which can be represented by a three-stage framework, appear to involve test-induced changes in subsequent learning behaviors and possibly other processes. Further research is needed to clarify moderating factors, theoretical issues, and best practices for educational applications.

Prior knowledge is often strongly related to students’ learning. In the present research, we explored the relationship between prior knowledge and the accuracy of students’ predictive monitoring judgments (judgments of learning; JOLs) and postdictive monitoring judgments (confidence judgments). In four experiments, students completed prior knowledge tests over two domains (football and cooking), learned new items from those domains, and completed a test over those items. To ensure the learning was new, the items that students learned and were tested over consisted of made-up facts from each domain. In Experiments 1–3, students made JOLs predicting the likelihood that they would remember each item on the test. In Experiments 2 and 3, students also made confidence judgments in the accuracy of their response after answering each question on the final test. Prior knowledge was negatively related to the accuracy of students’ JOLs, but unrelated to the accuracy of their confidence judgments. Exploratory analyses revealed that the relationship with JOLs was likely driven by high knowledge students giving relatively lower JOLs to items that they later remembered. Experiment 4 directly tested this possibility by having students make binary memory predictions about whether they would remember each item. Outcomes were consistent with the exploratory analyses. Thus, the negative relationship between prior knowledge and JOL accuracy appears to be driven by the greater tendency of high knowledge students, relative to low knowledge students, to remember items that they thought they would forget.

Taking a test before learning new information in a lesson improves memory for that information - pretesting effect. Although the specific memory benefit of a pretest on pretested information has been well documented, it remains unclear what the circumstances necessary for the broader memory benefit are - that is, the benefit of a pretest on memory of information in the lesson that was not pretested. Sometimes this broader benefit is present, but other times it disappears or reverses. We investigated if manipulating where the non-pretested information appears in a lesson - either before or after the pretested information - affects broader memory benefits. Participants read a text passage (Experiment 1) or watched a video lecture (Experiment 2) after completing a pretest on half of the lesson content. The pretested information appeared either at the beginning (prior to the non-pretested information) or at the end (after the non-pretested information) of the lesson. The final test assessed memory of both pretested and non-pretested information. We hypothesized that pretests trigger an attentional window that opens during the lesson and closes after pretested information has been identified. Any information, including non-pretested information, will benefit from being in this window because it is more likely to be processed. We found that memory of non-pretested information is better if the non-pretested information is presented at the beginning versus at the end of a lesson, regardless of delivery modality. These results indicate that the presentation order of pretested versus non-pretested information contributes to the broader memory benefits associated with pretesting.

We report four experiments, wherein subjects engaged in either problem-solving practice or example study. First, subjects studied an example problem. Subjects in the example study condition then studied two more analogous problems, whereas subjects in the problem-solving practice conditions solved two such problems, each followed by correct-answer feedback. In Experiment 1, subjects returned 1 week later and completed a posttest on an analogous problem; in Experiments 2–4, subjects completed this posttest immediately after the learning phase. Additionally, Experiment 3 consisted of a control condition, wherein subjects solved these same problems, but did not receive feedback. Experiments 3 and 4 also included a mixed study condition, wherein subjects studied two examples and then solved one with feedback during the learning phase. Across four experiments, we found that the training conditions (i.e., problem-solving practice, mixed, and example study) performed equally well on the posttest. Moreover, subjects in the training conditions outperformed control subjects on the posttest, indicating that the null findings were due to the training conditions learning and transferring their knowledge equally well. After the posttest in Experiment 4, subjects were asked to solve repeated problems from the learning phase. Subjects in the problem-solving practice and mixed study conditions performed better on repeated problems than subjects in the example study condition, indicating that they better learned the solution strategies for these problems than subjects in the example study condition. Nevertheless, this benefit was insufficient to produce differential transfer of learning among the training conditions on the posttest.

[Full text link: https://rdcu.be/cSXY3] Research on the psychology of learning has highlighted some straightforward ways of enhancing learning. However, effective learning strategies are underutilized by learners. In this Review, we discuss key research findings on two specific learning strategies: spacing and retrieval practice. We focus on how these strategies enhance learning in a variety of domains across the lifespan, with an emphasis on research in applied educational settings. We also discuss key findings from research on metacognition—learners’ awareness and regulation of their own learning. Learners’ underutilization of effective learning strategies could stem from false beliefs about learning, lack of awareness of effective learning strategies, or the counter-intuitive nature of these strategies. Findings in learner metacognition highlight the need for improving learners’ subjective mental models of how to learn effectively. Overall, the research discussed in this Review has important implications for the increasingly common situations in which learners must effectively monitor and regulate their own learning. [Nature Reviews Psychology, August 2022]

General Audience Summary Students often develop misconceptions about what they learn, which can persist and interfere with learning. Instructors thus have considerable interest in methods that help students correct their misconceptions. One promising phenomenon is known as the hypercorrection effect, wherein misconceptions are more likely to be corrected (after receiving feedback) when learners have higher confidence that those misconceptions are correct. Although it has been proposed that this effect has educational applications, studies typically explore hypercorrection effects using simple materials (e.g., trivia facts) and immediate tests that can be completed through pure memorization of previous answers. However, in real classes, students must often apply and transfer what they learn to novel situations, long after the material is learned, at which point their misconceptions might return. We report three classroom studies that address these issues. Studies 1–2 test whether students’ misconceptions that have been corrected return 10–15 weeks later: Students completed a pretest over course concepts, wherein they rated their confidence in the correctness of each response and were then shown the correct answer. Students then completed an immediate posttest (identical to the pretest) and at the end of the term completed a delayed posttest with novel questions that tested identical concepts as the pretest. Both studies found a hypercorrection effect on the immediate posttest, but approximately 20% of misconceptions that were initially corrected returned on the delayed posttest, particularly those that students were originally highly confident about. Study 3 only included an immediate posttest, which consisted of novel questions over the same concepts that were tested in the pretest, and once again revealed a hypercorrection effect. Thus, the hypercorrection paradigm may indeed help students correct many of their misconceptions and transfer this knowledge to novel, analogous scenarios in which this knowledge is applicable, but some misconceptions seem to eventually return.