Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Mar;74(3):413-424. doi: 10.1177/1747021820968483. Epub 2020 Nov 11.
Students are often advised to do all of their studying in one good place, but restudying to-be-learned material in a new context can enhance subsequent recall. We examined whether there are similar benefits for testing. In Experiment 1 ( = 106), participants studied a 36-word list and 48 hr later-when back in the same or a new context-either restudied or recalled the list without feedback. After another 48 hr, all participants free-recalled the list in a new context. Experiment 2 ( = 203) differed by having the testing-condition participants restudy the list before being tested. Across both experiments, testing in a new context reduced recall, which carried over to the final test, whereas restudying in a new context did not impair (and in Experiment 2, significantly enhanced) recall. These findings reveal critical interactions between contextual-variation and retrieval-practice effects, which we interpret as consistent with a distribution-of-memory-strengths framework.
学生经常被建议在一个好地方完成所有的学习，但在新的语境中重新学习待学习的材料可以增强后续的回忆。我们研究了测试是否有类似的好处。在实验 1（n=106）中，参与者学习了一个包含 36 个单词的列表，48 小时后——无论是在相同的还是新的语境中——他们要么重新学习，要么在没有反馈的情况下回忆列表。又过了 48 小时，所有参与者都在一个新的语境中自由回忆列表。实验 2（n=203）的不同之处在于测试条件下的参与者在测试前重新学习了列表。在这两个实验中，在新的语境中进行测试会降低回忆，这种影响会持续到最后的测试，而在新的语境中重新学习不会损害（在实验 2 中，显著增强了）回忆。这些发现揭示了语境变化和检索练习效果之间的关键相互作用，我们将其解释为与记忆强度分布框架一致。
