Journal Article

Does pre-testing promote better retention than post-testing?

Casati, Roberto, Latimier, Alice, Riegert, Arnaud, Ramus, Franck, Son, Thierry Ly, Peyre, Hugo

2019

Overview

Compared with other learning strategies, retrieval practice seems to promote superior long-term retention. This has been found mostly in conditions where learners take tests after being exposed to learning content. However, a pre-testing effect has also been demonstrated, with promising results. This raises the question, for a given amount of time dedicated to retrieval practice, whether learners should be tested before or after an initial exposure to learning content. Our experiment directly compares the benefits of post-testing and pre-testing relative to an extended reading condition, on a retention test 7 days later. We replicated both post-testing (d = 0.74) and pre-testing effects (d = 0.35), with significantly better retention in the former condition. Post-testing also promoted knowledge transfer to previously untested questions, whereas pre-testing did not. Our results thus suggest that it may be more fruitful to test students after than before exposure to learning content.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: Control Groups / Educational Facilities Improvement / Effect Size / Experiments / Inferences / Information Transfer / Learning / Learning Strategies / Lecture Method / Literature Reviews / Long Term Memory / Meta Analysis / Pretesting / Pretests Posttests / Prior Learning / Prose / Retention / Time