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2 references
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- Vol 1 RE: Chapters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, App A, App B
- Vol 1 TE: App A
- Vol 2 RE: Chapter 10, App C, App D
- Vol 4 RE: App A, App C
- Vol 4 TE: App C
- Vol 5 RE: Chapters 7, App A
distributed practicespacing effectverbal recallretention intervalinterstudy intervallong-term retentionspacing optimisationexpanding schedulesJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Cepeda and colleagues meta-analyse distributed practice in verbal recall, drawing 839 assessments from 317 experiments in 184 articles.
Key ideas
Spacing study episodes generally improves later retention compared with massing them together, but the best interval between study sessions is not fixed. Interstudy interval and final retention interval interact: as the time until the final test grows, the spacing that maximises performance also tends to grow. The review distinguishes the benefit of any spacing from the question of whether more spacing is always better and finds limited support for simple expanding schedules as a universal rule. Considerable variation and gaps in long-duration research remain.
Why it matters
For educators, the synthesis supports revisiting important material across separated occasions, choosing spacing in relation to how long knowledge should last, and avoiding both immediate repetition and excessively long gaps that make successful retrieval unlikely.
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- Vol 1 RE: Chapter 8
spacing effectinterstudy intervalretention intervaloptimal retentiondelayed reviewretrieval schedulingknowledge accessibilityforgetting adjustmentJournal article Evidence summaryAt a glance
Cepeda and colleagues investigate how the interval between two learning sessions should relate to the desired duration of retention.
Key ideas
More than 1,350 participants learned facts, reviewed them after gaps ranging up to several months, and completed a final test after delays extending to one year. For each final-test delay, performance first improved and then declined as the interstudy gap increased, producing a ridge of optimal combinations rather than one universally best schedule. Longer desired retention called for a longer gap, although the optimal gap remained only a fraction of the test delay. The study demonstrates that recommendations such as “space practice” require a time horizon.
Why it matters
For educators and learners, the findings support planning reviews backward from when knowledge must remain accessible, avoiding immediate repetition, and using retrieval success and forgetting to adjust schedules rather than applying a single interval to every goal.
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Edition abbreviations
- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
Citation checks
References are checked against publisher records, scholarly indexes, DOI or ISBN metadata, repositories and author records where available. An entry marked [Citation not verified] preserves the wording found in the relevant volume without attributing findings to an unconfirmed work.
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