Enhancing Learning and Retarding Forgetting:

Our research on learning enhancement has been focusing on the consequences for learning and forgetting of some of the more obvious and concrete choices that arise in instruction, including: How does spacing of practice affect retention of information over significant retention intervals (up to two years)? Do spacing effects generalize beyond recall of verbal materials? Is feedback needed to promote learning, and must it be immediate? Testing has been found to enhance learning; does it actually reduce the rate of forgetting? Can testing effects be extended to nonverbal materials? We suggest that as answers to these questions are accumulated, it should become possible for cognitive psychology to offer non-obvious advice that can be applied in a variety of instructional contexts to facilitate learning and reduce forgetting.