Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Ames, IA 50011-3180, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2011 Nov;37(6):1547-52. doi: 10.1037/a0024140. Epub 2011 Jun 27.
Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.
先前的研究提出，测试比复习机会更能增强记忆保留，因为它们促进了中介信息的有效性——即连接提示和目标的单词或概念（Pyc & Rawson，2010）。尽管已经证明测试可以促进参与者被要求生成的中介信息的保留，但尚不清楚在测试期间自动激活了哪些类型的中介，以及这些中介如何有助于以后的保留。在当前的研究中，参与者通过测试（例如，Mother：_____）或复习（例如，Mother：Child）来学习提示-目标对，然后在这些项目以及一个与提示强烈相关的新呈现项目（例如，Father）上进行测试——即语义中介。与通过复习学习项目的参与者相比，通过测试学习项目的参与者在最终识别测试中对语义中介的错误警报率更高（实验 1），并且在最终提示回忆测试中也更有可能从语义中介中回忆出正确的目标（实验 2）。这些结果支持中介有效性假设，并表明语义相关信息可能是在测试中激活的一种自然中介。
