Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis
1. Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis By Nicholas J. Cepeda, Harold Pashler, Edward Vul, John Wixted, Doug Rohrer Psychological Bulletin , 2006, Vol. 132, No. 3, 354-380
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4. Previous Meta Studies Involving Distributed Practice Primary Meta-Studies Articles Thrust Conclusions Moss 1996 120 Divided studies by age and type of material (verbal, motor or intellectual) Longer ISIs facilitate learning in 80% of verbal and motor skills, but only help in 1/3 of cases involving intellectual skills (math) Lee & Genovese 1988 47 Motor skills only Distributed Practice improves both acquisition and retention. This overturns a previous (1987) study by Adams. Donovan & Radosevich 1999 63 Parsed studies by Domain 1. Mental requirements,, Overall complexity, and Methodological Rigor 2. ISI intervals: ISI<1min, 1min<ISI<10min, 10min<ISI<1hr, ISI>1day 3. Retention interval 1. Biggest effects for low rigor, low complexity tasks. 2. Increasing ISI = larger effect for free recall, foreign language and verbal discrimination UP TO A POINT. Then there was loss. 3. Increasing practice intervals lowers gains and retention in skill tasks (piano, typing, etc) 4. Verbal memory increased as intervals increased less than an hour, but decreased when the interval was greater than a day. Janiszewski 2003 97 Verbal Memory Skills See next page for conclusions
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8. Bottom Line Results from CPVWR From http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~jwixted/Reprints/Cepeda%20et%20al.%20%282006%29.pdf , July 5 th , 2010