Total retrieval spacing improved one-week vocabulary recall while relative schedules were not distinguished¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q3 · n=96 undergraduate students
Currency · newest study 2011 · checked against its sources 2026-10-16 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

One experiment tested three repeated retrievals after an initial successful recall of Swahili–English pairs. Its lags were intervening trials within a learning session, not days between sessions.

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Three consecutive additional retrievals yielded no detectable advantage over one successful retrieval on a one-week cued-recall test (26% versus 25%); all tested spaced-retrieval groups exceeded this massed group. → Karpicke & Bauernschmidt 2011

q3 i? Across short, medium, and long absolute spacing (15, 30, 90 intervening trials), final recall rose from 49% to 64% to 75%, collapsing across the relative schedules. → Karpicke & Bauernschmidt 2011

q3 i? With absolute spacing matched, expanding, equal, and contracting schedules showed no detectable difference on one-week final recall, although expanding schedules altered learning-phase response-time slopes at short and medium total spacing. → Karpicke & Bauernschmidt 2011

Evidence¶

Karpicke & Bauernschmidt 2011¶

Karpicke, J. D., & Bauernschmidt, A. (2011). Spaced retrieval: Absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), 1250–1257. doi:10.1037/a0023436

q3 · randomized experiment with between- and within-subject contrasts · i? · no pooled standard effect used on this page · n=96 undergraduate students · causal · r?

Learners studied and retrieved pairs to one correct recall, then items were assigned to three extra tests under varying total and relative spacing. At the one-week test, total spacing favored longer trial lags; relative schedule had no detected main effect or interaction (reported F<1), so equivalence was not shown. Response-time slopes during initial practice were used as an observed proxy for retrieval difficulty and changed with relative schedule at short and medium total spacing, but that change did not yield a corresponding final-recall advantage. The experiment does not compare day-level course schedules or establish that difficulty itself caused retention.

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Should the gaps expand, stay equal, or contract? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 7 narrower claims that bear on it: 8 distinct studies (4 causal, 3 quant-synthesis, 1 review), q1–q4, 1 of 8 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Related Claims¶

• Spaced Retrieval Improves Retention
• Distributed Practice Improves Retention
• Expanding retrieval schedules have not shown consistent advantages over equally spaced or contracting schedules matched on total spacing — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Expanding and uniform spacing schedules of retrieval practice do not differ significantly in final retention (g = 0.034) — a broader claim this one bears on
• 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 — a broader claim this one bears on
• Expanding interstudy intervals led to better recall than fixed intervals, but conclusions are tentative — reports the opposite
• Number of retrieval exposures moderates the expanding-versus-uniform schedule benefit: more tests favour the expanding schedule — related
• Retrieval before re-presentation (TTST) improves final cued recall of nonsense-syllable/number pairs relative to pure study (Experiment 1) — related
• Expanding and uniform spaced practice better for long retention intervals; contracting better for short intervals — related
• Spaced practice produces a robust small-to-medium retention advantage over massed practice for mathematics learning overall (g = 0.26). — related
• Attempted recall during vocabulary study showed no demonstrable superiority over mere reading and re-reading in adult learners — related