Learning from your mistakes: does it matter if you’re out in left foot, I mean field?

ABSTRACT

Studies have shown that generating errors prior to studying information (pencil–?) can improve target retention relative to passive (i.e., errorless) study, provided that cues and targets are semantically related (pencil–ink) and not unrelated (pencil-frog). In two experiments, we manipulated semantic proximity of errors to targets during trial-and-error to examine whether it would modulate this error generation benefit. In Experiment 1, participants were shown a cue (band–?) and asked to generate a related word (e.g., drum). Critically, they were given a target that either matched the semantic meaning of their guess (guitar) or mismatched it (rubber). In Experiment 2, participants studied Spanish words where the English translation either matched their expectations (pariente–relative) or mismatched it (carpeta–folder). Both experiments show that errors benefit memory to the extent that they overlap semantically with targets. Results are discussed in terms of the retrieval benefits of activating related concepts during learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning
• memory
• retrieval
• generation
• errors

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Natalia Ladyka-Wojcik for her help with testing and data coding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 There is evidence that the HADS anxiety scale overestimates the extent of clinical anxiety in student populations like the one studied here (Andrews, Hejdenberg, & Wilding, 2006).

2 Twelve participants had perfect recall for either Match or Mismatch guesses; as such, we could not conduct the same set of analyses restricted to unsuccessful recall trials for all individuals. Running the analyses with the remaining participants revealed no significant difference in target memory as a function of whether a Match (M = 0.54; SD = 0.39) or Mismatch (M = 0.53; SD = 0.40) guess was unsuccessfully recalled, F < 1, p = 0.91, .

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP 123484) awarded to both authors and start-up funds given to Andrée-Ann Cyr by York University, Glendon Campus.