Memory improvement through testing – some research

The impact of the testing effect can be seen in two recent studies, which are outlined below.

Study #1

Two American psychologists, Jeff Karpicke and Henry Roediger, conducted an experiment on a group of college students to examine the effects of testing on fact memorisation and language learning. The got students to learn pairs of Swahili and English words. They asked the students to prepare for a test in different ways. For example, one group were asked to keep testing themselves on all items without dropping what they were getting right, while another group were told to stop testing themselves on their correct answers.

The results were remarkable. The students who dropped items from testing remembered about 35% of the word pairs. Those who kept testing items even after they had learned them could recall 80% of the word pairs.

Study #2

Another notable study was conducted in 2014 study when Carola Wiklund-Hörnqvist got 83 students in an undergraduate psychology course to study a series of psychological concepts for four minutes. Half of the students in the experiment continued to study the facts while each one was presented on a computer screen for 15 seconds.

The other half of the class took six tests in which they had to come up with the concept described on the screen.

At the end of the learning period, all 83 participants took a test in which they were given a fact and asked to type in the corresponding concept. The same test was given 18 days later and again 5 weeks later.

Participants who had been tested outperformed the other students on all three tests.

The students who were tested in the second example were given an additional memory boost through what is known as ‘immediate feedback’ – that is, finding out whether you’ve answered correctly or incorrectly straight after you have provided your answer.