Strengthening Memory Using Reinforcement Methods

While it may seem efficient, students are more likely to forget memorized material if they don’t reinforce their learning with other strategies, and a new study looks at how incorporating guesswork into a lesson can significantly boost students’ ability to recall information. The results from the two experiments in this study 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.

Cyr, A., & Anderson, N. D. (2018). Learning from your mistakes: does it matter if you’re out in left foot, I mean field? Memory, 26(9), 1281-1290. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2018.1464189

Process of Retrieval Beneficial to Student Success

Typically, there is a greater emphasis amongst educators towards learning activities that encourage elaborative studying in comparison to activities that require students to practice retrieving and reconstructing knowledge. However, this study found that practicing retrieval produces greater gains in meaningful learning amongst students, compared to elaborative studying. This supports the theory that retrieval practice enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes. The implications of these findings indicate that the process of retrieval is important in assisting educators in developing advantageous teaching techniques to help improve their students' content retrieval, and in turn, their success.

Karpicke, J. D. & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772-775. https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327