Retrieval Practice Promotes Higher-Order Cognition

The retrieval practice effect means that when learning a specific content,repeated retrieval can improve the memory retention level of the content more than repeated learning.One of the ultimate goals of education is not short-term improvement in learning,but long-term reinforcement learning.Therefore,it is important to explore the relationship between retrieval practice and higher-order learning.Among the studies that have explored retrieval practice and higher-order learning,it has been found that retrieval practice can improve classification performance in higher-order classes.However,the boundaries between categories are not well differentiated in previous research,and learners may not be able to use precise language to describe the differences between them,or there are no obvious rules that can be clearly stated in words.Due to the different category structures used in previous studies on retrieval practice to promote classification,the retrieval practice effect on information integration category learning may be affected by the difference in category structure in rule category learning.Therefore,this study uses rule-based category learning as material to explore the impact of retrieval practice on higher-order learning.Experiment 1 selected 117 subjects,adopted a single-factor between-subject experimental design,and selected 3 different learning methods for category learning,The learning methods were repeated learning group(SSSS),retrieval practice group with repeated learning(STST)and retrieval only group(STTT).The experimental results show that in the rule-based category learning,the main effect of learning method is significant.The final classification performance of STST group and STTT group was significantly better than that of SSSS group.Experimental results show that learning classification rules using the retrieval practice strategy can produce better classification performance.This effect also showed transfer in the classification of new stimuli,even if the stimuli did not appear in the learning phase,but still led to better classification performance.However,the category of research-learning is simple,and the subjects only need to discover one element in the learning process to form the judgment rules of the whole category.This simple material does not correspond to a real educational situation,and the stimulation is relatively simple compared to what is learned in many college chemistry courses.Therefore,Study 2selected complex categories,each of which contained more diagnostic features than the categories in Study 1,to further explore the effect of extraction exercises on higher-order classification.In the Experiment 2,111 subjects were selected in the complex category,and the single-factor between-subject experimental design was used to explore the effects of the three learning methods on the complex rule category.The experimental results are basically consistent with the first study.Under the complex category,the STST group still showed a retrieval practice effect,but there was no retrieval practice effect between the SSSS group and the STTT group.Through analysis,we found that in complex materials,learners in the STTT group lacked the opportunity to relearn,which reduced the success rate of initial retrieval and affected the final test performance.Therefore,in Study 3,visual cues were added to the STTT group to reduce material complexity.Experiment 3 and Experiment 2 are basically the same,with the addition of visual cues in the learning process of the pure extraction group.113 subjects were selected and divided into 3 groups to learn by SSSS,STST,and STTT with cues.The results showed that the main effect of learning method was significant in classification performance,and the main effect of learning method was significant in the classification of new stimuli.This suggests that the addition of visual cues can affect the learning performance of the extraction-only group and reduce the difficulty of learning complex categories.In conclusion,in category learning using the retrieval practice strategy,retrieval practice can not only promote the performance of information-integrated category learning,but also the learning performance of rule-based category structure.In higher-order classification,the addition of tests promotes the learning of higher-order knowledge,and this effect can also be transferred to new stimuli that have not been learned.While the performance of the pure extraction group may be affected by the difficulty of the material,adding hints can improve the effect of extraction exercises.