The effectiveness of dropout schedules depends critically on the length of the interval between presentations of an item¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2007 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? A dropout schedule with a longer initial ISI was more effective overall than conventional schedules, whereas a dropout schedule with a shorter initial ISI was not. → Pyc 2007

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

Across both experiments (227 undergraduates total), the 23-drop schedule matched conventional performance in fewer trials while the 5-drop schedule yielded lower final test performance, supporting the article's conclusion that "dropout can be a more efficient schedule for studying to-be-learned materials" only under a sufficiently long initial interval.

"Our results suggest that the overall effectiveness of dropout schedules may depend critically on the length of the interval between presentations of a given item."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• 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 — related
• 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
• 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 — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• A short-ISI dropout schedule (5-drop) used significantly fewer trials but yielded lower final test performance than conventional schedules in Experiment 1 — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Expanding interstudy intervals led to better recall than fixed intervals, but conclusions are tentative — related
• Expanding retrieval schedules have not shown consistent advantages over equally spaced or contracting schedules matched on total spacing — related
• The authors' findings add to evidence that expanding-interval schedules are not more effective than fixed-interval schedules of practice — related
• Expanding and uniform spaced practice better for long retention intervals; contracting better for short intervals — related
• Long practice periods were not much less favorable than short ones in addition practice, with evidence favoring the longer periods — related