Relearning-to-criterion designs confound distribution of practice with amount of second-session practice¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesis r2 · q1
Currency · newest study 2006 · checked against its sources 2026-10-21 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q1 i? In studies training to criterion in later sessions, longer ISIs necessarily provide more relearning trials, making it impossible to isolate distributed practice effects per se. → Cepeda 2006

Evidence¶

Cepeda 2006¶

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

q1 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2

Methodological argument, not a tested result: the authors identify criterion-training procedures (e.g., Bahrick's studies) as confounding ISI with relearning amount and recommend fixed relearning trials to equalize initial learning.

"Thus, in designs that have this feature, distribution of practice is confounded with the amount of practice time during the second (and subsequent) sessions. This makes it impossible to know whether differences in final-test performance reflect distributed practice effects per se"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Spaced Practice Improves Retention — related
• The optimal interstudy interval increases as the retention interval increases — related
• ISI effects on recall are nonmonotonic and depend jointly on retention interval — related
• Spaced retrieval practice produces better final retention than massed retrieval even though spacing lowers initial retrieval success, and more absolute spacing enhances long-term retention — related
• Spaced retrieval practice (successive relearning) produced multi-year retention of foreign language vocabulary in adults, as reported by the review — related
• Distributed practice outperforms massed practice for long-term learning, with a possible foreign-language exception — related
• Proportional measurement of relearning intervals poses a scaling problem for mapping optimal relearning schedules — related
• Retrieval practice research extends to determining the optimal amount of practice testing for individual students — related
• For short maze problems, massed learning effort is more economical than distributed effort in trials, time and errors, for both rats and human adults — related
• First-pass recall accuracy rises while trials-to-criterion and exposure duration fall across the three weekly relearning sessions — related
• Total exposure time per session was significantly lower in the relearn condition than in the restudy condition, ruling out an exposure confound — related