Not New, but Nearly Forgotten: the Testing Effect Decreases or even Disappears as the Complexity of Learning Materials Increases

Abstract

The testing effect is a finding from cognitive psychology with relevance for education. It shows that after an initial study period, taking a practice test improves long-term retention compared to not taking a test and-more interestingly-compared to restudying the learning material. Boundary conditions of the effect that have received attention include the test format, retrieval success on the initial test, the retention interval, or the spacing of tests. Another potential boundary condition concerns the complexity of learning materials, that is, the number of interacting information elements a learning task contains. This insight is not new, as research from a century ago already had indicated that the testing effect decreases as the complexity of learning materials increases, but that finding seems to have been nearly forgotten. Studies presented in this special issue suggest that the effect may even disappear when the complexity of learning material is very high. Since many learning tasks in schools are high in element interactivity, a failure to find the effect under these conditions is relevant for education. Therefore, this special issue hopes to put this potential boundary condition back on the radar and provide a starting point for discussion and future research on this topic. Keywords Testing effect . Retrieval practice . Complex learning tasks . Problem solving . Worked examplesIn 1989, Glover published an article entitled The Btesting^phenomenon: Not gone but nearly forgotten. The testing phenomenon, nowadays known as the testing effect or retrieval practice effect, B…refers to the finding that students who take a test on material between the time they first study and the time they take a final test remember more of the material than students who

Adaptive quizzes to increase motivation, engagement and learning outcomes in a first year accounting unit

“…However, this is not always an advantage as it can encourage an instrumental approach to testing where the student learns in order to pass the test rather than to learn skills that will be relevant in a wider context. The testing effect, whereby the act of being tested not only assesses learning but enhances later long-term retention, is recognised (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), though this effect decreases as the complexity of the material increases (Van Gog & Sweller, 2015). The use of adaptive quizzes can also encourage assessment design to focus on objective knowledge rather than the development of process skills.…”

Cognitive Load Theory, Element Interactivity, and the Testing and Reverse Testing Effects

“…The testing effect occurs when people, having memorized some information and being tested on that information, perform better on a subsequent test than people who have been asked to relearn the information (for reviews, see Roediger, Putnam, & Smith, ; van Gog & Sweller, ). The effect has been demonstrated by using instructional content composed of animations (Johnson & Mayer, ), prose passages (e.g.…”

“…Nevertheless, like all instructional effects, it has limits. In the experiments of this paper, we investigated the suggestion that the effect is more likely using low complexity information that needs to be memorized rather than higher complexity information that requires more complicated processing and additional working memory resources (van Gog & Sweller, ). We will begin by relating the testing effect to the worked example effect that normally uses complex information.…”

Explanations and Interactives Improve Subjective Experiences in Online Courseware

“…While this may maximize the measurable effects of testing, it is also less educationally relevant, because the test items can be memorized and it requires no transfer of the material to a different context. In support of this, Gog and Sweller (2015) found that the testing effect disappears as the complexity of the material increases. In this study, we did not re-use assessment items, so no participant was exposed to an assessment item more than once.…”

“…Although the testing effect has been replicated in laboratory studies with educationally-relevant materials, classroom-based studies produce effect sizes that are typically smaller than those in simple, repeated testing memorization tasks (Gog & Sweller, 2015;Roediger & Karpicke, 2006).…”