Pretesting boosts recognition, but not cued recall, of targets from unrelated word pairs

Abstract

Attempting to retrieve the answer to a question on an initial test can improve memory for that answer on a subsequent test, relative to an equivalent study period. Such retrieval attempts can be beneficial even when they are unsuccessful, although this benefit is usually only seen with related word pairs. Three experiments examined the effects of pretesting for both related (e.g., pond-frog) and unrelated (e.g., pillow-leaf) word pairs on cued recall and target recognition. Pretesting improved subsequent cued recall performance for related but not for unrelated word pairs, relative to simply studying the word pairs. Tests of target recognition, by contrast, revealed benefits of pretesting for memory of targets from both related and unrelated word pairs. These data challenge popular theories that suggest that the pretesting effect depends on partial activation of the target during the pretesting phase.

The benefits of impossible tests: Assessing the role of error-correction in the pretesting effect

“…The observation that errors improve subsequent target recognition, even for cross-category errors, mirrors the pattern that is seen for unrelated and novel word pairs such pondspanner and roke-mist (Potts et al, 2019;Seabrooke et al, 2021 ;Seabrooke, Hollins, et al, 2019a). We have previously argued that this result is also inconsistent with search set theory (Seabrooke et al, 2021;Seabrooke, Hollins, et al, 2019a). Search set theory suggests that unsuccessful guessing attempts activate both the participant's overt guess and other related concepts, including the correct target.…”

“…It might be argued that there is something peculiar to our novel encoding procedurewhere participants had to guess the category of the target as well as the target itself on Pretest trialsthat might have generated the very different pattern of results on the target recognition and associative recognition tasks. However, previous experiments, using more standard encoding procedures, have shown very similar results (Seabrooke et al, 2021;Seabrooke, Hollins, et al, 2019a). In these earlier experiments, participants were not required to guess the category of the target on Pretest trials, but simply to guess the targetthe standard approach used by Potts and Shanks (2014).…”

“…We also tested whether the results would generalize to an associative recognition test. As discussed above, previous research has demonstrated that, for semantically unrelated word pairs (from the participants' perspective), pretesting does not improve performance on associative tests of memory such as cued recall or associative recognition (Seabrooke et al, 2021;Seabrooke, Hollins, et al, 2019a). It remains possible, however, that the benefit of within-over cross-category errors reflects a different psychological process to the process that is responsible for the general benefit that is seen for generating errors over studying.…”

“…Firstly, target recognition memory is less likely to suffer from interference from guesses that are unrelated to the target. Secondly, past studies of the PTE using unfamiliar cue-target word pairs have shown that the effect is only observed in tests that assess target memory (Seabrooke et al, 2021;Seabrooke, Hollins, et al, 2019a).…”

You won’t guess that: On the limited benefits of guessing when learning a foreign language

“…For guessing to benefit memory, the target word must be conceptually related to the cue, at least when a memory test relying on cue-target associations is used. No benefits – or even costs – of guessing are observed when unrelated word pairs are learned (Bridger & Mecklinger, 2014 ; Grimaldi & Karpicke, 2012 ; Huelser & Metcalfe, 2012 ; Seabrooke et al, 2021 ). However, an interesting exception to the usual pattern of no benefits of guessing when words within a pair are not semantic associates has been demonstrated by Potts and Shanks ( 2014 ; see also Potts et al, 2019 ).…”