Expanding and uniform spaced practice better for long retention intervals; contracting better for short intervals¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · reviewr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2021 · checked against its sources 2026-10-21 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Küpper-Tetzel et al. (2014) found expanding and uniform spaced practices were better for long retention intervals while contracting spaced practice was better for shorter retention intervals. → Ouhao Chen & Fred Paas & John Sweller 2021
Evidence¶
Ouhao Chen & Fred Paas & John Sweller 2021¶
Ouhao Chen & Fred Paas & John Sweller. (2021). Spacing and Interleaving Effects Require Distinct Theoretical Bases: a Systematic Review Testing the Cognitive Load and Discriminative-Contrast Hypotheses. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09613-w
q2 · i? · review · r2
Systematic review of 119 spacing and interleaving studies, attributing this finding to Küpper-Tetzel et al. (2014), who compared uniform (3-day intervals), expanding (1 then 5 days), and contracting (5 then 1 day) spaced practice with word pairs. The review reports "expanding and uniform spaced practices were better for long retention intervals compared to contracting spaced practice."
"Results indicated that expanding and uniform spaced practices were better for long retention intervals compared to contracting spaced practice, which was better for shorter retention intervals."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Expanding retrieval schedules have not shown consistent advantages over equally spaced or contracting schedules matched on total spacing — reports the opposite
- Spaced Retrieval Improves Retention — reports the opposite
- Total retrieval spacing improved one-week vocabulary recall while relative schedules were not distinguished — related
- Expanding and uniform spacing schedules of retrieval practice do not differ significantly in final retention (g = 0.034) — reports the opposite
- The effectiveness of dropout schedules depends critically on the length of the interval between presentations of an item — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
expanding-uniform-spacing-retention-interval-moderator |
title |
Expanding and uniform spaced practice better for long retention intervals; contracting better for short intervals |
description |
Expanding and uniform spaced practice better for long retention intervals; contracting better for short intervals |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2021 |
source_checked |
2026-10-21 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-21 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — ouhao-chen-fred-paas-john-sweller-2021 |
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