Pickering Jade S, Henderson Lisa M, Horner Aidan J
Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
York Biomedical Research Institute, University of York, York, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Nov 10;8(11):201456. doi: 10.1098/rsos.201456. eCollection 2021 Nov.
Retrieval practice (RP) leads to improved retention relative to re-exposure and is considered a robust phenomenon when the final test conditions are identical to RP conditions. However, the extent to which RP 'transfers' to related material is less clear. Here, we tested for RP transfer effects under conditions known to induce integration of associated material at encoding, which may make transfer more likely. Participants learned multielement triplets (locations, animals and objects) and one pairwise association from each triplet was tested through RP, re-exposed, or not re-exposed (control). Two days later participants completed a final test of all pairwise associations. We found no evidence for an RP effect compared to re-exposure, but both tested/re-exposed pairs were better remembered than the not re-exposed control condition. We also found that transfer occurred from both tested to untested and re-exposed to not re-exposed pairs. Our results highlight that RP re-exposure can boost retention for directly tested/re-exposed event pairs and associated but untested/not re-exposed event pairs, suggesting re-exposure of integrated information can be of pedagogical value. The results also question the boundary conditions for an increase in retention for RP relative to re-exposure, highlighting the need for a better theoretical understanding of RP effects.
相对于再次接触，检索练习（RP）能提高记忆保持效果，并且当最终测试条件与检索练习条件相同时，这被认为是一种稳健的现象。然而，检索练习“迁移”到相关材料的程度尚不清楚。在此，我们在已知会在编码时促使相关材料整合的条件下测试了检索练习的迁移效应，这可能会使迁移更有可能发生。参与者学习了多元素三元组（地点、动物和物体），并通过检索练习、再次接触或不再次接触（对照）对每个三元组中的一对关联进行测试。两天后，参与者完成了对所有配对关联的最终测试。与再次接触相比，我们没有发现检索练习效应的证据，但与未再次接触的对照条件相比，经过测试/再次接触的配对都被更好地记住了。我们还发现，从经过测试的配对到未经过测试的配对以及从再次接触的配对到未再次接触的配对都发生了迁移。我们的结果表明，检索练习/再次接触可以提高直接经过测试/再次接触的事件配对以及相关但未经过测试/未再次接触的事件配对的记忆保持效果，这表明整合信息的再次接触可能具有教学价值。这些结果也对检索练习相对于再次接触在提高记忆保持方面的边界条件提出了质疑，凸显了对检索练习效应进行更好的理论理解的必要性。
