Does Testing Potentiate New Learning Because It Enables Learners to Use Better Strategies?

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition memory, and cognition, 2024-03, Vol.50 (3), p.435-457
• Main Authors: Ahn, Dahwi, Chan, Jason C. K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chinese languages; Experimental psychology; Female; Foreign Language Learning; Human; Human Information Storage; Humans; Individual differences; Individualism; Language; Language Development; Language tests; Learning; Learning Strategies; Learning transfer; Male; Practice; Second language learning; Transfer (Learning)
• ISSN: 0278-7393; 1939-1285
• DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001233

Testing can potentiate new learning, which is often called the forward testing effect. One potential explanation for this benefit is that testing might enable participants to use more effective learning strategies subsequently. We investigated this possibility by asking participants to report their encoding strategies in a multi-list foreign language learning paradigm with four preregistered experiments and one non-preregistered pilot experiment. In Experiments 1-3, participants learned three lists of Chinese-English pairs; one group took a test after every list (i.e., test condition) and the other group took a test only for the criterial List 3 (i.e., restudy condition). In addition, participants completed a transfer test and a study strategy survey. Although we found a forward testing effect in all experiments, participants in the test and restudy conditions did not report differences in strategies. In Experiments 4 and 5, we used a within-subject design so that we could correlate changes in strategy use with the magnitude of the forward testing effect on an individual level. Interestingly, individual differences in strategy change were moderately associated with the magnitude of the forward testing effect, but even here, strategy change did not mediate the effect of testing on performance. Overall, our data showed that, at least for foreign language learning of Chinese characters, interim testing did not enhance new learning by altering participants' subsequent encoding strategies. Moreover, our data showed that interim testing did not promote the transfer of Chinese language learning to novel characters.