Whether you’re trying to ace a test or pick up a new hobby, Iowa State Psychology Professor Shana Carpenter says combining two strategies — spacing and retrieval practice — is key to success.
Carpenter is the lead author of a paper in Nature Reviews Psychology that examined more than 100 years of research on learning.
“The benefits of spacing and retrieval practice have been confirmed over and over in studies in labs, classrooms, workplaces, but the reason why we’re showcasing this research is because these two techniques haven’t fully caught on. If they were utilized all the time, we’d see drastic increases in learning,” said Carpenter.
In the paper, Carpenter and her co-authors describe spacing as a strategy to learn in small doses over time. It’s the opposite of cramming the night before an exam. In one study, medical students who received repeated surgery training over three weeks performed better and faster on tests 2 weeks and 1 year later compared to medical students who had the same training all on one day.
Carpenter says there isn’t a universal rule about how much time to schedule between practice sessions. But research shows returning to the material after forgetting some — but not all — of the content is effective.
Retrieval practice is a strategy that involves recalling what was learned previously. It can take many forms, including flash cards, practice tests and open-ended writing prompts, and helps learners recognize what they do and don’t know. The paper’s authors emphasize that people who check their responses for errors or get feedback right away learn even better.
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