The Influence Of Delayed Learning Judgments On Memory Under Different Material Difficulties And Time Intervals

Delayed judgment of learning refers to a delay in learning some or all of the material and then making predictive judgments about the likelihood that the learned material will be recalled on subsequent tests.Researchers have often thought that using delayed judgments of learning can improve the accuracy of subjects’ judgments about their own memory,but recent research has found that delayed judgments of learning can also have a positive effect on learning and memory.The reason for this positive effect is that researchers believe that delayed learning judgements can have similar learning effects to tests.Tests have been repeatedly found to be highly robust as an efficient way of learning.In practical learning situations,however,tests tend to be cognitively taxing and emotionally stressful,making them unpopular with learners.Delayed learning judgements are easier for learners to accept as they only need to be generated mentally and are less psychologically stressful than tests(Beilock,2008).However,if delayed learning judgements are to be used as an alternative strategy to testing,the applicability of delayed learning judgements in different contexts needs to be further explored,i.e.whether they are as robust as testing.Not only are there some contradictions in the previous discussion,but the scope of the discussion is not specific enough and the material is limited to word pairs and pictorial material.In view of this,two variables,material difficulty and time interval,were selected to investigate whether delayed learning judgments could produce similar learning effects as tests in different contexts,and different learning materials were chosen to further explore the applicability of delayed learning judgments as a learning style.Experiment 1 used word pairs as learning materials to explore the effects of delayed learning judgments on memory at different difficulty word pairs and at different time intervals compared to restudy and test.A mixed experimental design of 3(learning style:delayed learning judgement,test,restudy)* 2(time interval: 5 minutes,2 days)* 2(material difficulty: low difficulty,high difficulty)was used,where learning style and time interval were between-subject variables,material difficulty was a within-subject variable,and the dependent variable was final recall performance.The results found that memory performance was significantly better for both delayed learning judgments and tests than for restudy,both were effective in facilitating the learning of word pairs of different difficulties at intervals of 5 minutes and 2 days.Experiment 2 was based on Experiment 1,in which sentence materials closer to the real learning situation were chosen to explore the effects of delayed learning judgments on memory in sentences of different difficulty and at different time intervals.The experimental design,independent variables and dependent variables were consistent with Experiment 1.The results found that(1)at a time interval of 5minutes,delayed learning judgments and tests were significantly better than restudy in memory performance for both simple and difficult sentences;(2)at a time interval of 2days,delayed learning judgments and tests were effective in promoting memory performance for simple sentences only,and no difference was found between delayed learning judgments,tests and restudy in memory performance for difficult sentences.This suggests that when the material is too difficult,the learning effects of delayed learning judgments and tests diminish as the time interval increases.In summary,the conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Delayed learning judgements can produce similar learning outcomes to tests and are robust enough to be used as an alternative strategy to tests in teaching.(2)In the case of word pairs,delayed learning judgments and tests can facilitate the learning of both low and high difficulty word pairs,regardless of the recall interval,and both have a greater memory advantage than the restudy method.(3)In the case of sentence material,delayed learning judgments and tests were more favourable than restudy for both low and high difficulty sentences at short intervals;however,as the time interval increased,delayed learning judgments and tests were more favourable only for low difficulty sentences,but not for high difficulty sentences.