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In those studies, one group read the same passage one, two, three, or four times and highlighted or took notes. The other read it once and later self-tested, looking up what they couldn't remember or got wrong. That led to much more stable learning over time.
Self-testing works because the person becomes the test taker instead of waiting on an outside tester. A large language model can write a short graduate-level quiz on any topic, and the difficulty can be set so that about fifteen percent of answers come out wrong. Physical skills don't work this way, since there the testing has to be physical.
Which experiment showed testing beats rereading?
In 2006, Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke at Washington University in St. Louis had students study passages by rereading them or by recalling them from memory. After five minutes, rereading looked better. After a week, the students who had practiced recall remembered far more. Their paper in Psychological Science is among the best-known results on the testing effect.
How do researchers rank study methods?
In 2013, John Dunlosky and colleagues reviewed ten common study techniques in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. They rated practice testing and spaced practice as high utility. Highlighting and rereading were rated low utility. Rereading creates a feeling of fluency, because the text looks familiar, and that familiarity is easily mistaken for knowing.
Why does waiting between tests help?
In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus memorized lists of nonsense syllables and charted how fast he forgot them. The curve dropped steeply at first and then flattened. He also found that reviewing material after some forgetting had occurred made it last longer than cramming. Researchers now call the benefit of spaced review the spacing effect.
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