A Meta-Analytic Review of the Benefit of Spacing out Retrieval Practice Episodes on Retention
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A Meta-Analytic Review of the Benefit of Spacing out Retrieval Practice Episodes on Retention Alice Latimier 1
& Hugo Peyre
1,2,3
& Franck Ramus
1
Accepted: 6 September 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Spaced retrieval practice consists of repetitions of the same retrieBjorkval 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. Keywords Retrieval practice . Spacing schedule . Learning . Memory
* Alice Latimier [email protected]
1
Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France
2
Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, UMRS 1141, Paris, France
3
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Robert Debré Hospital, APHP, Paris, France
Educational Psychology Review
Introduction Research on learning practices typically consists in studying the effects of a study phase on performance in a test phase. During the study phase, participants are exposed to learning contents, and review it under various modalities and on various time scales. Then, in a test phase occurring after a certain retention interval, they are tested for the retention of the initial learning contents. Such research has led to the demonstration of at least two major results: the benefits of retrieval practice and spacing learning (Bjork & Bjork, 2011; Brown et al., 2014).
The Benefits of Using Retrieval Practice Numerous studies have shown that retrieval practice enhances long-term retention, compared with re-reading or re-exposure to the material (e.g., Roediger & Butler, 2011;
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