Elaboration and the Testing Effect in Cued Recall

__abstract__ You will most likely remember learning lists of foreign vocabulary words (such as French) in high school. Most of my classmates and I did this by reading the entire list of words once and then covering the column with French words with a piece of paper. Reading one Dutch word at a time, I tried to remember the French equivalent and checked whether my answer was correct. If it was, I put a small note next to the word to signify that I did not have to study that word anymore. And if I was wrong, I tried to imprint the right answer and tested myself again on that word in the next cycle. By doing this, the cycles became shorter and shorter until I was convinced that I would remember all the words during the exam. Without knowing it, I was using the effect of testing to my advantage. I then thought testing myself during learning was just a means of assessing which words deserved more attention. However, I now know that the act of retrieving information strengthens memory. This is called the testing effect: information that is tested is remembered better than information that is only restudied. Research into the testing effect often uses cue-target pairs, such as word pairs. The testing effect in learning cue-target pairs is the topic of this dissertation. In sum, the testing effect refers to the result of taking an intervening test (often called retrieval practice) during learning on later performance on a final memory test. In the short term, for example on a final test just a few minutes after learning, the effect of intervening testing is negative: people perform worse on a short term final test after intervening testing than after repeatedly