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Taking a test has been shown to produce enhanced retention of the retrieved information. On tests, however, students often encounter questions the answers for which they are unsure. Should they guess anyway, even if they are likely to answer incorrectly? Or are errors engrained, impairing subsequent learning of the correct answer? We sought to answer this question in 3 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects read 80 obscure facts (e.g., "Where is Disko Island? Greenland") and then took a cued recall test. When a subject reported being unable to answer a question, on a randomly chosen half of those questions the computer program insisted upon a guess. Corrective feedback was provided either immediately (Experiment 1) or after a delay (Experiment 2). Forced guessing did not affect subjects' performance on a final test given 1 day later. We extended the investigation to more complex material in Experiment 3. Subjects saw a question (e.g., "Why do ice cubes often pop as they melt in your drink?") and its answer, but for half of the questions, subjects did not see the answer until they first provided a plausible explanation. On a test administered either on the same day or 1 week later, recall performance was again unaffected by a prior wrong guess. (Contains 3 footnotes, 5 tables,and 1 figure.)

Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) reported a series of experiments in which processing unrelated words in terms of their relevance to a grasslands survival scenario led to better retention relative to other semantic processing tasks. The impetus for their study was the premise that human memory systems evolved under the selection pressures of our ancestral past. In 3 experiments, we extended this functional approach to investigate the congruity effect--the common finding that people remember items better if those items are congruent with the way in which they are processed. Experiment 1 was a replication of Nairne et al.'s (2007) experiment and showed congruity effects in the survival processing paradigm. To avoid potential item-selection artifacts from randomly selected words, we manipulated congruence between words and processing condition in Experiments 2 and 3. As expected, final recall was highest when the type of processing and the materials were congruent, indicating that people remember stimuli better if the stimuli are congruent with the goals associated with their processing. However, contrary to our predictions, no survival processing advantage emerged between the 2 congruent conditions or for a list of irrelevant words. When congruity was controlled in a mixed list design, the survival processing advantage disappeared. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures and 1 footnote.)

Two experiments examined the testing effect with open-book tests, in which students view notes and textbooks while taking the test, and closed-book tests, in which students take the test without viewing notes or textbooks. Subjects studied prose passages and then restudied or took an open- or closed-book test. Taking either kind of test, with feedback, enhanced long-term retention relative to conditions in which subjects restudied material or took a test without feedback. Open-book testing led to better initial performance than closed-book testing, but this benefit did not persist and both types of testing produced equivalent retention on a delayed test. Subjects predicted they would recall more after repeated studying, even though testing enhanced long-term retention more than restudying. These experiments demonstrate that the testing effect occurs with both open- and closed-book tests, and that subjects fail to predict the effectiveness of testing relative to studying in enhancing later recall. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]