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

Abstract

Relative to studying alone, guessing the meanings of unknown words can improve later recognition of their meanings, even if those guesses were incorrect – the pretesting effect (PTE). The error-correction hypothesis suggests that incorrect guesses produce error signals that promote memory for the meanings when they are revealed. The current research sought to test the error-correction explanation of the PTE. In three experiments, participants studied unfamiliar Finnish-English word pairs by either studying each complete pair or by guessing the English translation before its presentation. In the latter case, the participants also guessed which of two categories the word belonged to. Hence, guesses from the correct category were semantically closer to the true translation than guesses from the incorrect category. In Experiment 1, guessing increased subsequent recognition of the English translations, especially for translations that were presented on trials in which the participants’ guesses were from the correct category. Experiment 2 replicated these target recognition effects while also demonstrating that they do not extend to associative recognition performance. Experiment 3 again replicated the target recognition pattern, while also examining participants’ metacognitive recognition judgments. Participants correctly judged that their memory would be better after small than after large errors, but incorrectly believed that making any errors would be detrimental, relative to study-only. Overall, the data are inconsistent with the error-correction hypothesis; small, within-category errors produced better recognition than large, cross-category errors. Alternative theories, based on elaborative encoding and motivated learning, are considered.

Pretesting boosts item but not source memory

“…In both experiments, pretesting produced clear improvements in target recognition memory, relative to Read-only trials. This pattern is consistent with previous observations using unfamiliar word definitions (Potts et al, 2019;Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke, Mitchell, Wills, Inkster, et al, 2021), semantically unrelated word pairs , and unrelated face-fact pairs . In tests of source memory, however, no effect of pretesting was observed, regardless of whether the source was assessed for target colour (Experiment 1) or temporal context (Experiment 2).…”

“…When participants incorrectly guessed the definitions of rare English words at encoding, they were more likely to correctly recognise the corrective feedback in a later test than if they had simply studied the definitions without generating a guess. This pattern is consistent with previous results (Potts et al, 2019;Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke, Mitchell, Wills, Inkster, et al, 2021). The pattern also reiterates that, in contrast to earlier thoughts, pretesting can also improve memory for targets that were presented in semantically unfamiliar and unrelated word pairs, at least in target recognition tests.…”

“…In two experiments, we examined the effect of pretesting on source memory by presenting the targets in one of two colours (Experiment 1) or lists (Experiment 2) at encoding. Following previous research, we predicted that participants would show better recognition of targets that they had incorrectly guessed at encoding than those that they had simply studied (Potts et al, 2019;Seabrooke, Mitchell, Wills, Inkster, et al, 2021). The question of main interest here was whether pretesting would similarly improve source memory.…”

Can we learn from errors? Retrieval facilitates the correction of false memories for pragmatic inferences

“…This explanation would account for the finding that, when the guessing error and the target are semantically related, retrieval is enhanced [26,32,[35][36][37]. Other research however has found no effect or even a detrimental effect of guessing when unrelated word pairs were learned [30,31,[38][39][40]. As Metcalfe and Huesler [28] argue: "the notion that the benefit seen from the generation of errors in typical participants is attributable to semantic memory mediation sits awkwardly with the findings that amnesics who are thought to have intact semantic memory but not episodic memory [41][42][43] do not similarly benefit" [28].…”

Pre-testing effects are target-specific and are not driven by a generalised state of curiosity

“…These guess trials are contrasted with study-only trials. Here, the question and answer are presented together with no pre-test (e.g., Clark et al, 2021;Cyr & Anderson, 2015Grimaldi & Karpicke, 2012;Hays et al, 2013;Huelser & Metcalfe, 2012;Knight et al, 2012;Metcalfe & Huelser, 2020;Potts et al, 2019;Potts & Shanks, 2014;Seabrooke, Mitchell, Wills, Inkster et al, 2021;Zawadzka & Hanczakowski, 2019).…”