Testing and Retention

Testing and Retention


    The talk by Dr. Knowlton dealt with the effects on desirable difficulties on learning, and in particular its increase in retention. In this study, they tested subjects reacting to a stimulus, and giving them either blocked or interleaved sequences. The results showed that the interleaved practice had better retention. Neurally, sensorimotor areas were more activated in interleaved practice, and also during recall with interleaved subjects. Transfer was also examined during the study. They found that transfer was faster when done by interleaving practice, than when the practice was blocked. Neurally, fMRI was used to see what was going on. It turned out that that subjects better at transfer had an increased cerebellum activation.
    An application of some of the ideas in the talk to an academic context was explored in “How Tests Make Us Smarter”. In a study conducted by Jefferey D. Karpicke and Henry L. Roediger, they showed that testing can in fact help with retention, when compared to studying untested material. In the experiment, they gave students passages to read, some of which they were tested immediately on, while others where only reread, without any testing, at least in the time immediately after reading.  Then they were tested later, and the researchers found that passages tested immediately had better recall than those that were only reread. The explanation offered for the results was that testing forced the subjects to be able to retrieve the information, and made the information more ingrained. A similar outcome was found when actually looking at a middle school classroom. In the classroom, on material that was tested three times, the class average was an A-, while on material that was taught in an otherwise similar manner, it was a C-. The article than went on to give advice on how to use the findings from the study in the classroom. They suggested giving exams that are not critical, and giving many of them. The giving tests is a good example of a desirable difficulty, and we can see it here increasing retention, just like the talk suggested.

Works Cited.
Roediger, Henry “How Tests Make Us Smarter” The New York Times. 18 July 2014. Web. 5. Dec 2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/how-tests-make-us-smarter.html


Lin J., Knowlton B., Chiang M., Iacoboni M., Udompholkul P., Wu A. Brain–behavior correlates of optimizing learning through interleaved practice. 22. Februrary 2011. Web. 5. Dec 2015.