Little Jeri L, Bjork Elizabeth Ligon
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,
Mem Cognit. 2015 Jan;43(1):14-26. doi: 10.3758/s13421-014-0452-8.
Answering multiple-choice questions with competitive alternatives can enhance performance on a later test, not only on questions about the information previously tested, but also on questions about related information not previously tested-in particular, on questions about information pertaining to the previously incorrect alternatives. In the present research, we assessed a possible explanation for this pattern: When multiple-choice questions contain competitive incorrect alternatives, test-takers are led to retrieve previously studied information pertaining to all of the alternatives in order to discriminate among them and select an answer, with such processing strengthening later access to information associated with both the correct and incorrect alternatives. Supporting this hypothesis, we found enhanced performance on a later cued-recall test for previously nontested questions when their answers had previously appeared as competitive incorrect alternatives in the initial multiple-choice test, but not when they had previously appeared as noncompetitive alternatives. Importantly, however, competitive alternatives were not more likely than noncompetitive alternatives to be intruded as incorrect responses, indicating that a general increased accessibility for previously presented incorrect alternatives could not be the explanation for these results. The present findings, replicated across two experiments (one in which corrective feedback was provided during the initial multiple-choice testing, and one in which it was not), thus strongly suggest that competitive multiple-choice questions can trigger beneficial retrieval processes for both tested and related information, and the results have implications for the effective use of multiple-choice tests as tools for learning.
回答带有相互竞争选项的多项选择题可以提高后续测试的成绩，不仅在关于先前测试信息的问题上如此，在关于先前未测试的相关信息的问题上也是如此——特别是在关于与先前错误选项相关的信息的问题上。在本研究中，我们评估了这种模式的一种可能解释：当多项选择题包含相互竞争的错误选项时，应试者会被引导去检索先前学习的与所有选项相关的信息，以便在它们之间进行区分并选择答案，这种处理会加强后来对与正确和错误选项相关的信息的获取。支持这一假设的是，我们发现，对于先前未测试的问题，当它们的答案先前在初始多项选择题测试中作为相互竞争的错误选项出现时，在后续的线索回忆测试中成绩会提高，但当它们先前作为非竞争选项出现时则不然。然而，重要的是，竞争选项并不比非竞争选项更有可能作为错误答案被误选，这表明先前呈现的错误选项普遍增加的可及性并不能解释这些结果。在两个实验（一个在初始多项选择题测试期间提供了纠正反馈，另一个没有）中重复得到的本研究结果，因此强烈表明，相互竞争的多项选择题可以触发对已测试和相关信息的有益检索过程，并且这些结果对将多项选择题有效地用作学习工具具有启示意义。
