Repetition and Spacing

Question 1

Ebbinghaus

Answer 1

• more repetition = less forgetting/ better performance

- but we also know (not from Ebbinghaus) that mere exposure/repetition isn’t enough

Question 2

Distribution of practice

Answer 2

-better to spread out repetition over time

Question 3

massed practice

Answer 3

study then immediately study again

Question 4

distributed practice

Answer 4

• spaced practice

Question 5

distribution of practice paradigm

Answer 5

• presented words repeatedly but the number of items between each presentation differed (lag)
• measured long term retention

Question 6

Spaced effect

Answer 6

• greater lags between practice and study trials yield better long term retention

Question 7

Jacoby (1978) study on massed versus spaced practice (also generative)

Answer 7

• study phase:
  
  • once presented pair
    -read (1R)
    -generate (1G)
    -twice presented
    - massed
    -read (2MR)
    -generate (2MG)
    -spaced
    - read-read (2SR)
    -read-generate (2SG)
    Results
  • 1G better than 1R
    -spaced better than massed
    -generate better than read
    -2SG the best (benefits superimposed)

Question 8

Why does the spacing effect occur?

Answer 8

• deficient processing

- encoding variability

Question 9

Deficient processing

Answer 9

• during massed practice, repeated occurances are not processed fully
• less attention to items just processed

Question 10

Encoding variability

Answer 10

• longer lags result in variable encoding
• longer lags lead to different contexts which lead to different ways of elaborating on the material
• variable encoding leads to more connections which lead to more cues that you can draw on

Question 11

Binding of items and context

Answer 11

• learning event features
  - items: what is being remembered
  - features available from context
• features in context vary, items get bound to context features

Question 12

How does massed and spaced practice relate to how items bind to context

Answer 12

• massed practice: less new contextual information (short lag = less time for the context to change)
• spaced practice: context is less likely to be the same as before, you new features will bind to item, more cues that could reactivate the memory

Question 13

study and test context and feature binding

Answer 13

• study and then immediately test does well because the test and study contexts are more likely to be similar

Question 14

Spontaneous recovery

Answer 14

• context at end of extinction (before recovery is similar to original context of learning)
• what you are thinking about is part of the context

Question 15

episodic memory is _____

Answer 15

associative

-it binds item to context features

Question 16

Episodic retrieval is ______

Answer 16

cue dependent

• probability of remembering depends on what cues are available at test
• context plays a powerful role in episodic memory