Testing protects against proactive interference in face–name learning

Abstract

Learning face-name pairings at a social function becomes increasingly more difficult the more individuals one meets. This phenomenon is attributable to proactive interference-the negative influence of prior learning on subsequent learning. Recent evidence suggests that taking a memory test can alleviate proactive interference in verbal list learning paradigms. We apply this technique to facename pair learning. Participants studied four lists of 12 face-name pairings and either attempted to name the 12 faces just studied after every list or did not. Recall attempts after every list improved learning of the fourth list by over 100%. Moreover, no reduction in learning of face-name pairings occurred from list 1 to list 4 for participants who attempted to name studied faces between lists. These results suggest that testing oneself on the names of a group of new acquaintances before moving on to the next group is an effective mnemonic technique for social functions.

The forward testing effect on self-regulated study time allocation and metamemory monitoring.

“…These data were analysed by a mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Interim test as a between-subjects variable and List (1-5) as a within-subjects variable. A within-subjects contrast showed that there was a negative linear regression of study time across lists, F (1,28) These results imply that participants in the Interim Test group were better able to control their retrieval from the current list and that the memory search set in the Interim Test group was smaller than that in the No Interim Test group (Weinstein et al, 2011).…”

“…There was no significant difference in study time between the groups on any of Lists 1-4, 0.7 ≤ ts ≤ 1.85, .95 ≥ ps ≥ 0.08. These results imply that participants in the Interim Test group were better able to control their retrieval from the current list and that the memory search set in the Interim Test group was smaller than that in the No Interim Test group (Weinstein et al, 2011). …”

“…To generalize and conceptually replicate the findings of Experiment 1, in Experiment 2 we employed 4 lists of 12 face-name pairs as the experimental materials, as Weinstein et al (2011) did.…”

“…Forty-eight male face pictures were collected from the Psychological Image Collection at Stirling (PICS) (available from: http://pics.psych.stir.ac.uk/), the same source used by Weinstein et al (2011). In addition 48 male names were collected from TOP BABY BOY NAMES 2014, Baby Centre UK (available from: http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a25011625/top-baby-boy-names2014#ixzz3TbXFW52d).…”

“…In Experiments 3 and 4, the main aim is to explore the forward testing effect on metamemory monitoring and to explore people's metacognitive insight into this forward testing benefit. Some previous studies have explored the forward testing effect by comparing an Interim Test group, who underwent interim testing following each list, and a No Interim Test group, who performed a distractor task following each list and underwent interim testing following the final list only (Szpunar et al, 2008;Weinstein et al, 2014;Weinstein et al, 2011 (Pastötter et al, 2011;Szpunar et al, 2014;Szpunar et al, 2013;Szpunar et al, 2008). All of these latter studies showed that final list interim test recall in the Interim Restudy group was slightly but consistently worse than that in the No Interim Test group.…”