Tests have been vastly used for the assessment of learning in educational contexts. Recently, however, a growing body of research has shown that the practice of remembering previously studied information (i.e., retrieval practice) is more advantageous for long-term retention than restudying that same information; a phenomenon often termed "testing effect." The question remains, however, whether such practice can be useful to improve learning in actual educational contexts, and whether in these contexts specific types of tests are particularly beneficial. We addressed these issues by reviewing studies that investigated the use of retrieval practice as a learning strategy in actual educational contexts. The studies reviewed here adopted from free-recall to multiple-choice tests, and involved from elementary school children to medical school students. In general, their results are favorable to the use of retrieval practice in classroom settings, regardless of whether feedback is provided or not. Importantly, however, the majority of the reviewed studies compared retrieval practice to repeated study or to "no-activity." The results of the studies comparing retrieval practice to alternative control conditions were less conclusive, and a subset of them found no advantage for tests. These findings raise the question whether retrieval practice is more beneficial than alternative learning strategies, especially learning strategies and activities already adopted in classroom settings (e.g., concept mapping). Thus, even though retrieval practice emerges as a promising strategy to improve learning in classroom environments, there is not enough evidence available at this moment to determine whether it is as beneficial as alternative learning activities frequently adopted in classroom settings.

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ABSTRACT. Remembering recently studied materials (i.e., retrieval practice) is more beneficial for learning than restudying these materials. Objective: To investigate whether retrieval practice benefits learning for individuals with Down syndrome. Methods: Eighteen individuals with Down syndrome (mean age=21.61 years, SD=5.93) performed a task entailing a first read of an encyclopedic text covering a series of target words. After reading the text twice, participants recalled half of the target words (retrieval practice), and reread the other half (restudy). After 48 hours, participants answered a multiple-choice test including all target words. Subsequently, WASI’s Vocabulary and Matrix reasoning subtests were administered to estimate intelligence. Results: The benefit of retrieval practice for learning was numerically greater than the benefit of restudy, although this advantage did not reach statistical significance. Inspection of individual data suggested that the benefit of retrieval practice was greater than the benefit of restudy for the majority of the participants, independently of the participants’ vocabulary or reasoning abilities. Conclusion: Although more research is needed before retrieval practice can be recommended as a learning strategy for individuals with Down syndrome, the data suggest that retrieval practice can be a useful teaching tool for at least part of this population.