Spacing Effect, Practical Applications

Practical Techniques

In general, a long temporal gap between learning sessions increases the level of future recall. While very long gaps of at least a month are necessary to produce long-lasting benefits to retention for both verbal materials and motor tasks, relearning on a daily basis is more effective if the learner cares solely about performance on an upcoming exam or performance. Taking a few minutes break between each study session is always preferable to learning material within a single, massed study period. In general, too little spacing between study sessions is quite harmful to retention while too much spacing only leads to small decreases in later recall. An optimal level of spacing can more than double later recall.

The use of cumulative exams is perhaps the simplest technique teachers can implement in their classroom if they wish to promote durable memory for the material being taught. Cumulative exams encourage students to learn the same set of material on at least two separate occasions, providing the essential temporal gap between each learning episode. Other useful instructional design choices include systematic quizzes on previous topics, use of classroom time to review key curriculum content, and homework assignments that emphasize the primary points to be learned. Homework assignments and quizzes that mix, shuffle, or interleave different topics, such as addition and subtraction, have been shown to improve later performance.

Because testing with feedback is more beneficial than restudy alone, students should learn using flash-cards rather than merely by (re)reading textbook chapters. When testing with feedback is used during study sessions rather than restudy alone, benefit from study episode spacing is substantially increased. After an exam, teachers should provide delayed feedback about the correct answers, which provides a form of spaced learning. Ideally, this should involve sequentially presenting a frequently missed test item, asking students to generate an answer to that item, and then providing feedback about the correct answer. Unless feedback is provided, students are quite unlikely to fix misconceptions about the correct answer. Tests and exams should emphasize key points rather than minor details so that students retain the most important material being taught. More key material will be remembered if fewer superfluous details are presented within textbook chapters and during classroom lectures. This instructional design choice allows educators to devote more time to spaced restudy of key points.

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