The situation with respect to the spacing of repetitions and memory

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The revival of interest in the effectiveness of spaced practice, as compared with massed practice, in learning is attributed to the abandonment of the constraints of serial and paired-associate list learning and the discovery of stable benefits from spaced practice in continuous paired-associate learning, short-term memory for individual items, and single-trial free-recall learning. Comments are made about the preceding symposium papers by Underwood, Waugh, and Greeno, and some data on the differential effects of spacing of repetitions in free-recall learning are introduced in an effort to assess the current state of fact and theory.

References (23)

  • McGeochJ.A.

    The psychology of human learning

    (1943)

    • Cited by (0)

    1

    These comments are based on those made at the Midwestern Psychological Association symposium, May, 1969, but they have been liberally expanded and revised. In particular, it was necessary, in the interests of continuity and completeness, to insert substantial sections to cover what Tulving talked about at the symposium but would not write about. In the symposium I leaned heavily on his remarks because they were closely parallel to those I would have made if I had been a principal speaker. However, my statements about lag effects in free-recall learning, and my interpretation, are my responsibility alone, and are not intended to represent what he said.

    2

    This work was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense, and monitored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, under Contract No. AF(638)-1736 with the Human Performance Center, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.

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    Copyright © 1970 Published by Elsevier Inc.