Transfer of test-enhanced learning is greatest across test formats, to application and inference questions, to medical diagnosis problems, and to mediator and related word cues¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesis r3 · q4
Currency · newest study 2018 · checked against its sources 2026-10-13 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q4 i? Category-level meta-analyses indicate transfer is greatest for transfer across test formats, to application and inference questions, to problems involving medical diagnoses, and to mediator and related word cues. → Steven C. Pan and Timothy C. Rickard 2018

Evidence¶

Steven C. Pan and Timothy C. Rickard 2018¶

Steven C. Pan and Timothy C. Rickard. (2018). Transfer of Test-Enhanced Learning: Meta-Analytic Review and Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000151

q4 · i? · quant-synthesis · r3

Synthesis across the review's six major transfer categories, comparing category-level transfer effect sizes. The review reports transfer "is greatest across test formats, to application and inference questions, to problems involving medical diagnoses, and to mediator and related word cues."

"That transfer of learning is greatest across test formats, to application and inference questions, to problems involving medical diagnoses, and to mediator and related word cues; it is weakest to rearranged stimulus-response items, to untested materials seen during initial study, and to problems involving worked examples."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Learning techniques have much smaller effects on deep learning and far transfer than on surface learning and near transfer — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Existing theoretical accounts attributing the testing effect to enhanced semantic elaboration receive limited support — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Retrieval Practice Improves Transfer — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Retrieval practice enhances performance on final inference and transfer questions relative to restudying, although a single-word fill-in-the-blank task did not — related
• Retrieval practice effects on mediator-cued final tests have been positive, but Coppens et al. (2016) concluded the true effect may be only about 0.10 to 0.20 — related
• Transfer of test-enhanced learning is weakest to rearranged stimulus-response items, to untested materials seen during initial study, and to problems involving worked examples — related
• Response congruency, elaborated retrieval practice, and initial test performance strongly influence the likelihood of positive transfer — related