Not New, but Nearly Forgotten: the Testing Effect Decreases or even Disappears as the Complexity of Learning Materials Increases

By Tamara van Gog, John Sweller. 2015

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The testing effect is a finding from cognitive psychology with relevance for education. It shows that after an initial study period, taking a practice test improves long-term retention compared to not taking a test and—more interestingly—compared to restudying the learning material. Boundary conditions of the effect that have received attention include the test format, retrieval success on the initial test, the retention interval, or the spacing of tests. Another potential boundary condition concerns the complexity of learning materials, that is, the number of interacting information elements a learning task contains. This insight is not new, as research from a century ago already had indicated that the testing effect decreases as the complexity of learning materials increases, but that finding seems to have been nearly forgotten. Studies presented in this special issue suggest that the effect may even disappear when the complexity of learning material is very high. Since many learning tasks in schools are high in element interactivity, a failure to find the effect under these conditions is relevant for education. Therefore, this special issue hopes to put this potential boundary condition back on the radar and provide a starting point for discussion and future research on this topic.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6526d4cdc271b28029bfef533cd780901b911628

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Eight Ways to Promote Generative Learning (2016, background): “Whereas some researchers have concluded that the testing effect does not apply to complex materials (Van Gog and Sweller 2015), others have argued that this conclusion is not warranted (Karpicke and Aue 2015; Rawson 2015) and cite existing evidence for the benefits of testing beyond basic factual…”
Retrieval Practice & Bloom’s Taxonomy: Do Students Need Fact Knowledge Before Higher Order Learning? (2019, background): “Retrieval practice also promotes students’ learning of complex materials (Jensen, McDaniel, Woodard, & Kummer, 2014; Karpicke & Aue, 2015; Pyc, Agarwal, & Roediger, 2014; Rawson, 2015; cf., van Gog & Sweller, 2015).”