The authors' findings add to evidence that expanding-interval schedules are not more effective than fixed-interval schedules of practice¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2007 · checked against its sources 2026-10-19 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Comparison of the 1-5-9 expanding and 5-5-5 fixed conventional schedules in Experiment 1 showed no advantage for the expanding schedule. → 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

q2 · i? · causal · r2

Authors' interpretation in the General Discussion, drawing on Experiment 1's inclusion of both an expanding (1-5-9) and a fixed (5-5-5) interval conventional schedule, which performed similarly. They suggest future comparisons of conventional with variable schedules need only include a fixed-interval schedule.

"Our findings add to the growing body of literature suggesting that expanding-interval schedules are not more effective than fixed-interval schedules."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Expanding retrieval schedules have not shown consistent advantages over equally spaced or contracting schedules matched on total spacing — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Spaced Retrieval Improves Retention — related
• Expanding interstudy intervals led to better recall than fixed intervals, but conclusions are tentative — reports the opposite
• 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
• 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 effectiveness of dropout schedules depends critically on the length of the interval between presentations of an item — related