This paper examines interventions to increase the use of testing as a study strategy. Previous
research has examined the testing effect, which is the notion that actively recalling material
through testing leads to improved recall of the material later (Karpicke and Roediger, 2007).
The increased effectiveness should lead to increased use, but this may not always be the case.
Using theory of intelligence and memory controllability research, we designed two interventions
to promote the use of testing rather than restudying. A third intervention that explicitly described
the benefits of testing was also implemented. Participants learned Swahili-English word pairs
and were given the option to restudy or be tested on the material. None of the interventions
successfully increased the proportion of words participants chose to be tested on rather than to
restudy, revealing the stubbornness of students’ study strategy choices
