The Spacing Effect in Children's Generalization of Knowledge: Allowing Children Time to Forget Promotes Their Ability to Learn

Abstract

Distributing learning events in time promotes memory to a greater degree than massing learning together in immediate succession, a phenomenon known as the spacing effect. In this article, I review research on the spacing effect in children's acquisition and generalization of conceptual knowledge. For decades, researchers hypothesized that spaced learning should deter generalization because the forgetting that occurs between learning events limits children's ability to retrieve prior learning. However, new research suggests that spaced learning promotes children's generalization and implicates forgetting as the mechanism that supports, rather than deters, children's generalization. This work counters the intuitive assumption that forgetting uniformly constrains children's learning, suggesting instead that forgetting is a domain-general process that promotes cognitive development.KEYWORDS-forgetting; memory development; word learning; category learning; generalization; conceptual development; cognitive development Categorization and generalization are fundamental processes in cognition and development. As a result, researchers have examined how children categorize the world and the factors of the learning environment that support children's ability to generalize this information to novel contexts. In this review, I examine research on how the timing of learning affects children's acquisition and generalization of conceptual knowledge. Indeed, the world presents young learners with information across seconds, days, weeks, and years; in my research, I have begun to outline the processes underlying temporal gaps between learning events and how these mechanisms constrain or support conceptual development.How does timing affect learning? Research dating back to Ebbinghaus (1885/1964) has examined how timing affects memory for information. A persistent finding is that distributing learning events across time promotes retention to a greater degree than massing learning events together in immediate succession. This phenomenon is called the spacing effect (for reviews,

How we categorize objects is related to how we remember them: The shape bias as a memory bias

“…For example, according to forgetting-as-abstraction account (see Vlach, 2014, for a review), children's forgetting during the temporal gaps between category exemplar presentations promotes categorization and generalization. Across experiences with category exemplars, relevant features are likely to be present in multiple exemplars, reactivating this feature in memory.…”

“…Indeed, recent research has suggested that forgetting and retrieving information are critical processes in children's categorization of objects (Vlach, et al, 2008; Vlach, Sandhofer & Bjork, 2014; Vlach, Ankowski, & Sandhofer, 2012). In particular, having higher retention for features that are likely to be more relevant to categorization (i.e., shape) and lower retention of features that are likely to be less relevant to categorization (i.e., size) can promote generalization (forgetting-as-abstraction account; Vlach, 2014). …”

What's statistical about learning? Insights from modelling statistical learning as a set of memory processes

“…This connection is strengthened by recent work demonstrating that many of the same factors that influence memory-such as massed versus spaced practice-also influence children in statistical learning tasks such as discovering categories (e.g. [55,56]). To the extent that language processing is accomplished by the same kinds of mechanisms studied in more traditional memory paradigms, it may be the case that many aspects of language learning and comprehension are constrained by the way in which stimuli are encoded, stored and accessed in memory (e.g.…”

The right time to learn: mechanisms and optimization of spaced learning

“…His studies were based on the self-testing of acquired memory for lists of syllables, but the superiority of spaced training has now been established for many additional forms of human learning. For example, spaced learning is more effective than massed learning for facts, concepts and lists 2–4 , skill learning and motor learning 5,6 , in classroom education (including science learning and vocabulary learning) 7–9 , and in generalization of conceptual knowledge in children 10 . Spaced training also leads to improved memory in invertebrates, such as the mollusk Aplysia californica 11–14 , Drosophila melanogaster 15,16 and bees 17 , and in rodents 18,19 and non-human primates 20,21 .…”