Retrieval Practice: Testing as a Way to Learn

1. What You're Learning

Retrieval practice means studying by recalling information from memory (answering questions, writing what you remember with the book closed) instead of re-exposing yourself to it. Researchers call the resulting benefit the testing effect. You will see one well-known experiment that demonstrates it, and why it tends to feel less effective than it is.

2. Why This Matters

Rereading and highlighting are the most common ways people study, and they feel productive because the material looks increasingly familiar. But familiarity is not the same as being able to produce the idea when you need it. A large 2013 review of learning techniques (Dunlosky et al.) rated practice testing and distributed practice as the two most useful techniques it examined, and rated rereading and highlighting as low in usefulness.

The previous lesson covered when to review. This lesson covers how: each review should be an attempt to recall.

3. The Idea

A test is usually treated as a measurement. The testing effect says it is also a learning event. The act of searching memory and reconstructing an answer strengthens the route back to that information, which makes the next retrieval easier.

Rereading gives the answer to you, so memory does little work. It raises fluency (the text feels easy) and confidence, but less of it lasts.

Two practical consequences:

• Retrieval works best with some delay and some effort. Recalling something you saw ten seconds ago adds little.
• Checking your answer afterwards (feedback) helps correct errors. In the experiment below, retrieval helped even without feedback.

4. Walk Through an Example

Roediger and Karpicke (2006, Experiment 2) had students learn short prose passages in four 5-minute periods. Each period was either S (study: read the passage) or T (test: write down as much as you can remember, with no feedback). Groups then took a final recall test either 5 minutes or one week later.

Read the table in two directions:

• After 5 minutes, rereading wins. That is the result students see when they judge a method right after using it.
• After one week, the order flips. The group that read the passage once and then practised recalling it remembered half again as much as the group that read it four times (61% vs 40%).

The paper also reports that repeated studying made students more confident they would remember the material. Confidence and performance pointed in opposite directions.

5. Sources to Explore

• Roediger & Karpicke (2006), “Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention”, Psychological Science 17(3), 249–255. The figures above come from Experiment 2.
• Dunlosky et al. (2013), “Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques”, Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14(1): a review of ten common study techniques.