Increasing Retention without Increasing Study Time
Because people forget much of what they
learn, students could benefit from learning strategies that provide long-lasting knowledge. Yet surprisingly little is
known about how long-term retention is most efficiently achieved. Here we examine how retention is affected by two
variables: the duration of a study session and the temporal distribution of study time across multiple sessions. Our results
suggest that a single session devoted to the study of some material should continue long enough to ensure that mastery is achieved but that immediate further study of the same material is an inefficient use of time. Our data also show that the benefit of distributing a fixed amount of study time across two study sessions – the spacing effect – depends jointly on the interval between study sessions and the interval between study and test. We discuss the practical implications of both findings, especially in regard to mathematics learning.
