The pretesting effect comes to full fruition after prolonged retention interval.
Oliver Kliegl, Johannes Bartl, Karl‐Heinz T. Bäuml
Abstract
Taking a pretest before material is studied can enhance recall of that material on a subsequent final test. In the present research, we examined whether the magnitude of this pretesting effect is modulated by the delay that precedes the final test. Experiment 1 employed paired associates as study material and retention intervals of up to 30 min; Experiment 2 employed an educationally more relevant prose passage as study material and retention intervals of up to one whole week. In both experiments, we examined whether pretesting some of the study material improved recall of the pretested information relative to other material that was not pretested. Results of both experiments replicated the benefit of pretesting for retention of studied material. Strikingly, this pretesting effect increased and roughly doubled with increasing delay. Pretesting could play a significant role in educational settings where information typically needs to be retained over longer periods of time.