The Effects Of Material Difficulty,Encoding And Retrieval Duration On Retrieval Practice Effect

Retrieval practice effect refers to the method of testing a certain learning content once or several times within the same time,which can better improve the retention of memory for it compared with repeated learning.It is also called testing effect.Cognitive psychologists believe that memory consists of three basic processes: encoding,storage and retrieval,and current studies have identified that both encoding and retrieval duration will affect memory.Researchers are increasingly inclined to believe that the retrieval practice effect is a combination of encoding and retrieval,however,there has not been a systematic study on the effects of encoding and retrieval duration on memory retention.In addition,the current studies on the impact of the different encoding or retrieval duration on memory are used the same difficulty of experimental materials,but the material difficulty of learners in learning is often different,and it is unreasonable to spend the same amount of time learning difficult materials and easy materials in the actual learning process.The research on Allocation of Study Time,Retrieval Effort Hypothesis and necessary Difficulty Hypothesis shows that more time and effort should be Contributed to difficult materials to better improve the overall learning level.while the effects of different encoding and retrieval duration and material difficulty on memory retention are not yet clear.Therefore,this study focused on the influence of different material difficulty,different encoding and retrieval duration on the retrieval practice effect.Experiment 1 has studied the different effects of coding and retrieval duration on the Retrieval practice effects under different test intervals.On the basis of experiment 1,experiment 2 added the factor of material difficulty and investigated the influence of material difficulty and retrieval duration on retrieval practice effect at different test intervals.Under the conditions of this study,we have drawn the following conclusions:(1)The influence of encoding duration on retrieval practice effect is related to test interval.Extending encoding time promoted memory retention in the immediate test,but this phenomenon was not observed in the delayed test.(2)The time spent retrieving is a key factor affecting the retrieval practice effect.Appropriately extending the retrieval time resulted in better memory retention in bothimmediate and delayed tests.Which may be related to the extension of retrieval time and the devoted of more retrieval efforts.(3)The difficulty of materials affects the retrieval practice effect.The final memory performance of the difficult material was higher than that of the easy material in the delay test,and was only higher in the immediate test when the extraction time was extended.(4)The retrieval duration has a regulating effect on the retrieval practice effect of the difficulty of different materials.Which is reflected in that,compared with easy material,the memory of the difficult material is improved and maintained to a greater extent with the extension of the retrieval time in a certain range.