Practice testing and distributed practice receive high utility assessments because their benefits generalize widely across learners, tasks, and educational contexts¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · reviewr3·q2
Currency · newest study 2013 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (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? The monograph's synthesis rates practice testing and distributed practice as high utility because they benefit learners of different ages and abilities across many criterion tasks and educational contexts. → Dunlosky 2013
Evidence¶
Dunlosky 2013¶
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
q2 · i? · review · r3
The monograph's own overall assessment, a narrative synthesis of the literatures on the two techniques. The authors state the techniques "benefit learners of different ages and abilities" across many criterion tasks and educational contexts; no pooled effect size is printed for this summary judgment.
"Practice testing and distributed practice received high utility assessments because they benefit learners of different ages and abilities and have been shown to boost students' performance across many criterion tasks and even in educational contexts."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Retrieval practice improves long-term retention — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
- Summarization, highlighting, the keyword mnemonic, imagery for text, and rereading receive low utility assessments — related
- Rereading Is A Low Utility Study Strategy — related
- Highlighting shows low utility for improving learning outcomes — related
- Elaborative Interrogation Improves Learning — related
- Across ten learning techniques, distributed practice and practice testing have the largest effects and underlining and summarization the smallest — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
practice-testing-distributed-practice-high-utility |
title |
Practice testing and distributed practice receive high utility assessments because their benefits generalize widely across learners, tasks, and educational contexts |
description |
Practice testing and distributed practice receive high utility assessments because their benefits generalize widely across learners, tasks, and educational contexts |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2013 |
source_checked |
2026-10-20 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-13 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — dunlosky-2013 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.