The benefit of generating errors during learning: What is the locus of the effect?

Abstract

Guessing translations of foreign words (hodei?), before viewing corrective feedback (hodei-cloud), leads to better subsequent memory for correct translations than studying intact pairs (hodei-cloud), even when guesses are always incorrect (Potts & Shanks, 2014), but the mechanism underlying this effect is unknown. Possible explanations fall into two broad classes. One puts the locus of the effect at retrieval: Items studied through a generation process have more potential retrieval cues associated with them, or a more distinctive context, and are therefore more accessible at final test. The other puts the locus at encoding and involves enhanced encoding of the correct answer following the generation of an error compared with passive studying (Potts & Shanks, 2014). In 6 experiments we found support for the proposal that generating errors benefits memory through stimulating curiosity to learn correct answers following an incorrect guess, leading to enhanced processing of targets following generation. In Experiment 1, generating possible translations after seeing correct answers did not produce better memory than studying without generating, suggesting that an element of surprise or anticipation is necessary for generating to benefit memory. Experiments 2a–2c found enhanced recognition memory for targets following generating, suggesting increased focus on targets following a guess. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants rated their curiosity to learn correct answers higher when ratings were given after generating than before, suggesting that the act of generation increases curiosity to learn the answers. These findings imply that enhanced processing of feedback is a key consequence of errorful generation.

Selective effects of errorful generation on recognition memory: the role of motivation and surprise

“…These facts were subsequently more likely to be recognised than facts that were presented on trials in which no guesses were made (Read trials). Thus, we demonstrated that the previous errorful generation effects that have been observed with novel word pairs (Potts et al, 2019;Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke et al, 2019) generalise to unfamiliar face-fact materials. Errorful generation attempts also produced a specific improvement to the guessed facts, rather than conferring a more general benefit to all facts that were presented on those trials (memory was worse for studied facts than guessed facts presented on Generate trials).…”

“…Based on the earlier work by Shanks (2014, Potts, Davies, &Shanks, 2019) and Seabrooke et al (2019), we expected the participants to recognise more Guess targets than Read targets in the final recognition test. The primary question of interest was with respect to the Study targets (presented on Generate trials, but for which no guess was made).…”

“…Errorful generation effects appear to be robust, but it is also important to note that they only occur under certain test conditions. Errorful generation attempts have repeatedly been shown to improve performance on cue and target recognition tests that involve discriminating "old" items (those that were presented at encoding) from "new" foils that were not presented at encoding (Potts et al, 2019;Seabrooke et al, 2019). Comparable effects have also been observed with multiple-choice tests in which the participants have to identify the correct target for a given cue from among novel foils (Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke et al, 2019).…”

“…Several recent experiments have used a variant of Kornell et al's (2009) unsuccessful retrieval task to provide especially strong support for the notion that failed tests can be beneficial (Potts, Davies, & Shanks, 2019;Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke, Hollins, Kent, Wills, & Mitchell, 2019). In these experiments, the cues are unfamiliar wordseither very rare English words or foreign vocabularyand the targets are the corresponding common English definitions (e.g., roke-mist or gaztacheese).…”

Determining Students’ Communicative Competency By Their Use Of Speech Redundancy

“…https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2019.12.38 Corresponding Author: Mary Nechepurenko Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of the conference eISSN: 2357-1330 360 In oral speech, there is always a lot of redundancy, repetition of individual words, phrases, stamps, so-called dummy words, etc. is inevitable (Goldrick et al, 2019;Potts, Davies, & Shanks, 2019). In the flow of speech, such information helps to single out the most important information, to draw attention to the essential elements and to muffle the elements that are secondary and minor.…”