Tests improve memory – no matter if you feel good or bad while taking them

ABSTRACT

Based on studies demonstrating that testing promotes better long-term retention than restudying (i.e., the testing effect), testing has been recommended as a powerful tool to boost knowledge acquisition in educational settings. However, a factor ubiquitous in real-life learning contexts has been ignored to date: the learner's affective state. To examine whether the learner's affective state influences the testing effect, we conducted two experiments. We employed a standard testing-effect paradigm consisting of an initial study phase and a subsequent restudy/testing phase, and induced negative, neutral, or positive affective states either before participants initially studied short expository texts (Experiment 1) or before they restudied or were tested on them (Experiment 2). After one week, memory for the texts was tested. In both experiments, previously tested material was better remembered than previously restudied material. However, in none of the experiments, did the memory advantage of testing over restudying vary as a function of affect condition. Hence, the present results suggest that testing seems to benefit long-term retention independently of the learner's affective state.

KEYWORDS:

• Testing effect
• knowledge acquisition
• emotions
• moods
• learning strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Due to the application of different texts, small to medium sized correlations between repeated measures were expected (e.g., Kuhbandner & Pekrun, 2013).

2 One participant did not indicate age and gender.

3 Roediger and Karpicke (2006b) divided each text in 30 idea units. However, in their scoring scheme, single idea units often include several pieces of information, and they do not report which cut-off criterion was used to determine if a given idea unit was scored as correct. Hence, we decided to use a more fine-grained scoring scheme. In both experiments, all data were analysed on the basis of the scoring scheme provided by Roediger and Karpicke as well, and as the pattern of results did not differ, the results of the present study are only reported based on the fine-grained coding scheme.

4 In order to control for possible effects of the assignment of texts to learning conditions, all reported regression analyses were performed including type of text assignment as an additional predictor, and as the results did not differ, only the results based on the original set of predictors are reported.

5 Three participants (one in each arousal condition) did not complete affect ratings.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft] under grant KU 3325/2-1 to Christof Kuhbandner.