The dropout schedule was particularly effective for initially incorrect items, an advantage not attributable to initial ISI length and, the authors judge, unlikely to be due to item difficulty in Experiment 2¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2007 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Initially incorrect items were significantly more likely to be correct at final test in the 23-drop group than in either conventional group. → Pyc 2007 q3 i? In Experiment 1, the 23-drop group also showed an advantage for initially incorrect items over both conventional groups. → Pyc 2007 (2)

Evidence¶

Pyc 2007¶

Pyc, M. A., & Rawson, K. A. (2007). Examining the efficiency of schedules of distributed retrieval practice. Memory & Cognition, 35(8), 1917-1927. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03193420

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Experiment 2 conditional analyses (Table 2), t(41) = 2.86, p = .007 versus 5-5-5 and t(41) = 2.31, p = .026 versus 23-23-23. Since 23-drop and 23-23-23 shared the same initial ISI and similar numbers of incorrect items, the authors attribute the advantage to additional practice, with 4.7 initially incorrect items receiving four or more trials on average.

"Initially incorrect items were significantly more likely to be correct at final test in the 23-drop group than in either the 5-5-5 group or the 23-23-23 group"

Pyc 2007 (2)¶

Pyc, M. A., & Rawson, K. A. (2007). Examining the efficiency of schedules of distributed retrieval practice. Memory & Cognition, 35(8), 1917-1927. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03193420

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Experiment 1 conditional analyses (Table 1), t(63) = 1.90, p = .067 versus 5-5-5 and t(61) = 2.02, p = .048 versus 1-5-9; 5.1 initially incorrect items received four or more test-restudy trials on average.

"Indeed, this was the case for the 23-drop group, with initially incorrect items more likely to be correct at final test than in the 5-5-5 and 1-5-9 groups"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Dropping initially correct items incurred a cost relative to a long-ISI conventional schedule in Experiment 2, but this was offset by gains on initially incorrect items — related
• The effectiveness of dropout schedules depends critically on the length of the interval between presentations of an item — related
• A 23-item-ISI dropout schedule achieved final cued-recall performance similar to conventional schedules while using significantly fewer test-restudy trials in two experiments — related
• The authors' findings add to evidence that expanding-interval schedules are not more effective than fixed-interval schedules of practice — related
• Normative item difficulty was similar for items assigned to the first and second practice blocks in the experiments. — related
• A short-ISI dropout schedule (5-drop) used significantly fewer trials but yielded lower final test performance than conventional schedules in Experiment 1 — related