Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University, 1 Brookings Dr., Campus Box 1125, St Louis, MO, 63130, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2019 Oct;47(7):1328-1343. doi: 10.3758/s13421-019-00936-2.
The keyword mnemonic and retrieval practice are two cognitive techniques that have each been identified to enhance foreign language vocabulary learning. However, little is known about the use of these techniques in combination. Previous demonstrations of retrieval-practice effects in foreign language vocabulary learning have tended to use several rounds of retrieval practice. In contrast, we focused on a situation in which retrieval practice was limited to twice per item. For this situation, it is unclear whether retrieval practice will be effective relative to restudying. We advance the view that the keyword mnemonic catalyzes the effectiveness of retrieval practice in this learning context. Experiment 1 (48-h delay) partially supported this view, such that there was no testing effect with retrieval practice alone, but the keyword-retrieval combination did not promote better retention than keyword alone. Experiments 2 and 3 (1-week delay) supported the catalytic view by showing that the keyword-retrieval combination was better than keyword alone, but in the absence of keyword encoding there was no retrieval practice effect (replicating Experiment 1). However, with four rounds of retrieval practice, a marginally significant testing effect emerged (Experiment 3). Moreover, the routes through which participants reached each answer were identified by asking retrieval-route questions in Experiments 2 and 3. Keyword-mediated retrieval, which was observed sometimes even in no-keyword instructed conditions, was shown to be more effective than unmediated retrieval. Our findings suggest that incorporating effective encoding techniques prior to retrieval practice could augment the effectiveness of retrieval practice, at least for vocabulary learning.
关键词助记和检索练习是两种认知技巧，它们都被认为可以增强外语词汇学习。然而，对于这两种技巧的结合使用，我们知之甚少。先前关于检索练习在外语词汇学习中的作用的研究，往往倾向于使用多轮检索练习。相比之下，我们关注的是检索练习每次只针对一个项目的情况。在这种情况下，相对于复习来说，检索练习是否有效还不清楚。我们提出了这样一种观点，即关键词助记法在这种学习情境中促进了检索练习的效果。实验 1（48 小时延迟）部分支持了这一观点，即单独进行检索练习没有测试效应，但关键词-检索组合并没有比单独使用关键词更好地促进记忆保留。实验 2 和 3（1 周延迟）通过表明关键词-检索组合优于单独使用关键词，支持了催化观点，但如果没有关键词编码，就没有检索练习效应（复制了实验 1）。然而，进行四轮检索练习后，出现了一个边缘显著的测试效应（实验 3）。此外，通过在实验 2 和实验 3 中提出检索路径问题，我们确定了参与者达到每个答案的路径。即使在没有关键词提示的情况下，关键词介导的检索也被证明比非关键词介导的检索更有效。我们的发现表明，在进行检索练习之前采用有效的编码技术，可能会增强检索练习的效果，至少对于词汇学习来说是如此。
