The Forward Effect of Testing: Behavioral Evidence for the Reset-of-Encoding Hypothesis Using Serial Position Analysis

The forward effect of testing refers to the finding that retrieval practice of previously studied information increases retention of subsequently studied other information. It has recently been hypothesized that the forward effect (partly) reflects the result of a reset-of-encoding (ROE) process. The proposal is that encoding efficacy decreases with an increase in study material, but testing of previously studied information resets the encoding process and makes the encoding of the subsequently studied information as effective as the encoding of the previously studied information. The goal of the present study was to verify the ROE hypothesis on an item level basis. An experiment is reported that examined the effects of testing in comparison to restudy on items’ serial position curves. Participants studied three lists of items in each condition. In the testing condition, participants were tested immediately on non-target lists 1 and 2, whereas in the restudy condition, they restudied lists 1 and 2. In both conditions, participants were tested immediately on target list 3. Influences of condition and items’ serial learning position on list 3 recall were analyzed. The results showed the forward effect of testing and furthermore that this effect varies with items’ serial list position. Early target list items at list primacy positions showed a larger enhancement effect than middle and late target list items at non-primacy positions. The results are consistent with the ROE hypothesis on an item level basis. The generalizability of the ROE hypothesis across different experimental tasks, like the list-method directed-forgetting task, is discussed

The Forward Testing Effect: Interim Testing Enhances Inductive Learning.

Induction refers to the process in which people generalize their previous experience when making uncertain inferences about the environment that go beyond direct experience. Here we show that interim tests strongly enhance inductive learning. Participants studied the painting styles of eight famous artists across four lists, each comprising paintings by one pair of artists. In an interim test group participants’ induction was tested after each list. In two control groups participants solved math problems (interim math group) or studied additional new paintings (interim study group) following each of Lists 1–3 and were asked to classify new paintings on List 4. In the List 4 interim test, the interim test group significantly outperformed the other two groups, indicating that interim testing enhances new inductive learning. In a final cumulative test, accuracy in the interim test group at classifying new paintings by studied artists was nearly double that of the other two groups, indicating the major importance of interim testing in inductive learning. This enhancing effect of interim testing on inductive learning was associated with metacognitive awareness

Evaluating the conceptual strategy change account of test-potentiated new learning in list recall

Prior testing potentiates new learning, an effect known as test-potentiated new learning (TPNL). Research using lists of related words has established that testing, by free recall, also increases semantic clustering of later recall output. It has been suggested that this is evidence that testing induces a strategy change in encoding and retrieval towards greater conceptual organisation. The current research evaluated whether this conceptual strategy change explains TPNL in three experiments. We found a) that a retrieval task that did not increase semantic clustering (list discrimination) consistently produced TPNL, and b) that factors (word-relatedness and list structure) that influenced the amount of semantic clustering had no effect on the magnitude of TPNL. These results suggest that conceptual strategy change is neither necessary nor sufficient for TPNL and is more likely to be an effect of testing, rather than a cause of TPNL

Oscillatory Correlates of Selective Restudy

Prior behavioral work has shown that selective restudy of some studied items leaves recall of the other studied items unaffected when lag between study and restudy is short, but improves recall of the other items when lag is prolonged. The beneficial effect has been attributed to context retrieval, assuming that selective restudy reactivates the context at study and thus provides a retrieval cue for the other items (Bäuml, 2019). Here the results of two experiments are reported, in each of which subjects studied a list of items and then, after a short 2-min or a prolonged 10-min lag, restudied some of the list items. Participants' electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during both the study and restudy phases. In Experiment 2, but not in Experiment 1, subjects engaged in a mental context reinstatement task immediately before the restudy phase started, trying to mentally reinstate the study context. Results of Experiment 1 revealed a theta/alpha power increase from study to restudy after short lag and an alpha/beta power decrease after long lag. Engagement in the mental context reinstatement task in Experiment 2 eliminated the decrease in alpha/beta power. The results are consistent with the view that the observed alpha/beta decrease reflects context retrieval, which became obsolete when there was preceding mental context reinstatement

The Forward Testing Effect on Self-Regulated Study Time Allocation and Metamemory Monitoring

The forward testing effect describes the finding that testing of previously studied information potentiates learning and retention of new information. Here we asked whether interim testing boosts self-regulated study time allocation when learning new information and explored its effect on metamemory monitoring. Participants had unlimited time to study five lists of Euskara-English word pairs (Experiment 1) or four lists of face-name pairs (Experiment 2). In a no interim test group, which was only tested on the final list, study time decreased across successive lists. In contrast, in an interim test group, which completed a recall test after each list, no such decrease was observed. Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to investigate the forward testing effect on metamemory monitoring and found that this effect is associated with metacognitive insight. Overall, the current study reveals that interim tests prevent the reduction of study time across lists and that people's metamemory monitoring is sensitive to the forward benefit of interim testing. Moreover, across all 4 experiments, the interim test group was less affected by proactive interference in the final list interim test than the no interim test group. The results suggest that variations in both encoding and retrieval processes contribute to the forward benefit of interim testing. (PsycINFO Database Recor

Oscillatory brain activity before and after an internal context change — Evidence for a reset of encoding processes

Prior behavioral work has shown that changing context during encoding can influence long-term memory performance. The present study examined the neural correlates of such context effects by analyzing oscillatory brain activity during the encoding of words, both before and after a context change. Participants studied two lists of items and, after the presentation of List 1, were either cued to change their internal context through a simple imagination task, or not. Replicating the behavioral work, the change in context led to forgetting of the first list (List 1) and to memory enhancement of the second (List 2). Measuring EEGs during encoding of the two lists, the context change was found to affect oscillatory brain activity. Whereas an increase of theta and alpha power from List-1 to List-2 encoding was found when the context was left unchanged, a slight theta and alpha power decrease was found when the context was changed. In addition, median split analysis revealed that alpha power during List-2 encoding was related to the enhancement effect of the context change. The results suggest that a change in internal context can lead to a reset of encoding processes, thus pointing to a crucial role of encoding processes in context-dependent memory

Using retrieval practice as a tool to improve attainment in KS5 Biology

Retrieval practice is the act of recalling previously learned knowledge with little or no support (Jones, 2019). It has been shown to improve the retention of information more so than restudying (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006a). Moreover, it can aid the learning of new content too (Pastötter et al., 2011). This study investigated how retrieval practice could be implemented in A-Level Biology lessons, its impact on attainment and students’ perceptions. It was found that retrieval practice could be embedded into lessons relatively easily, in a variety of formats such as quizzes and concept mapping. Generally, students were engaged in the activities but some retrieval activities were better suited to certain topics or points in learning. Students completed past exam questions before and after the retrieval practice activities. After retrieval practice, attainment on the exam questions improved for all students. Additionally, students completed a questionnaire investigating their study habits. Results showed that many students use retrieval practice when studying but that they were unaware of the direct and indirect benefits to learning. Furthermore, students were also employing study strategies deemed low utility by the literature. Overall, their perceptions of study strategies and retrieval practice remained unchanged over the course of the investigation

Investigating Storage and Retrieval Processes of Intentional Forgetting: A Multinomial Modeling Approach

Intentional forgetting is an adaptive process that enbles people to forget episodic information as well as information that was just enoded. Contrary to current views on intentional forfetting, in the present thesis I show that intentional forgetting is driven by different combinations of cognitive processes, depending on whether intentional forgetting of episodic information or intentional forgetting of just encoded information is attempted. Retrieval processes seem to be driving intentional forgetting of information encoded in the past, whereas both storage and retrieval processes seem to be driving intentional forgetting of just encoded information. Importantly, the involvement of retrieval processes in forgetting just encoded information is likely a result of item-specific feature loss and variations in cognitive control abilities predict the storage of relevant information only in this regard. The results from the investigations reported in this thesis are discussed in light of existing theories on intentional forgetting

Memory modulation by offline consolidation and transcranial direct current stimulation

Two groups of experiments are discussed in this thesis, (a) procedural memory consolidation during sleep and wakefulness, to study the contribution of emotion in consolidation of procedural skill learning, and (b) memory modulation using electrical brain stimulation, to study the effects of long‐ and short‐duration stimulation of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on verbal episodic memory. Memory consolidation; The first study showed that participants who were trained in a mirror tracing task with negative emotional stimuli benefited more compared to the participants who were trained with neutral or positive emotional stimuli. The second experiment aimed to investigate the modulatory effect of stimuli with emotional content in a modified serial reaction time task (SRTT). This experiment failed to achieve any main effect of emotional content, retention type, their interaction or their interaction with session number. The only significant effect was found for the session number in which participants showed significantly higher performance in the second session. It is more likely that this outcome is due to the training effects over blocks. Brain stimulation; The first study showed that 20min anodal stimulation enhanced memory performance while the stimulation was delivered during the encoding phase, 20min cathodal stimulation impaired memory performance for the words that were encoded prior to the stimulation and impaired the recognition performance while it was delivered during the testing phase. The second study was similar to the first experiment with the exception that stimulation was delivered for 1.6s for each presented word in three different conditions: no stimulation, early‐stimulation and late‐stimulation. Results showed that early stimulation has significantly stronger effects on the memory performance of the participants compared to nostimulation and late‐stimulation in both anodal and cathodal stimulation types. Results also showed that early anodal stimulation enhanced the memory performance and early cathodal stimulation impaired the memory performance