Department of Psychology, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242-0001, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2011 Dec;18(6):1140-7. doi: 10.3758/s13423-011-0140-7.
A wealth of prior research has shown that testing can improve subsequent learning of the initially tested material. In contrast, only one recent study has shown that an interim test over prior material can improve learning of subsequent new material (i.e., an interim-test effect). Five experiments replicated and extended this initial work by exploring the extent to which interim test effects generalize to complex text material. Participants were prompted to recall each section of an expository text before moving on to study the next section, or were only prompted to recall after the final section. In all experiments, recall of the final, target section was greater when prior sections had received interim tests versus no interim tests. Experiment 3 established that the effect was due to interim testing in particular rather than to intervening activity in general. Experiment 4 established that the effect was not due to test expectancy differences. In contrast to prior research, Experiment 4 also provided evidence that the effect is not due to release from proactive interference. We discuss other possible mechanisms underlying interim-test effects with text, including shifting to more effective encoding strategies.
大量先前的研究表明，测试可以提高最初测试材料的后续学习效果。相比之下，只有一项最近的研究表明，对先前材料的中期测试可以提高对后续新材料的学习效果（即中期测试效应）。五项实验通过探索中期测试效果在多大程度上推广到复杂文本材料，复制并扩展了这项初步研究。参与者在继续学习下一部分之前，被提示回忆说明性文本的每一部分，或者仅在最后一部分之后被提示回忆。在所有实验中，与没有中期测试相比，对先前部分进行中期测试时，对最后一个目标部分的回忆效果更好。实验 3 证明，这种效果是由于中期测试，而不是一般的中间活动造成的。实验 4 还证明，这种效果不是由于测试期望的差异造成的。与先前的研究不同，实验 4 还提供了证据表明，该效果不是由于主动干扰的释放造成的。我们讨论了与文本相关的中期测试效果的其他可能机制，包括转向更有效的编码策略。
