Open AccessGoing beyond the spacing effect: Does it matter how time on a task is distributed?
Author(s) -
Dillon H. Murphy,
Robert A. Bjork,
Elizabeth Ligon Bjork
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
the quarterly journal of experimental psychology/quarterly journal of experimental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.249
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1747-0226
pISSN - 1747-0218
DOI - 10.1177/17470218221113933
Subject(s) - task (project management) , session (web analytics) , recall , psychology , cognitive psychology , word (group theory) , presentation (obstetrics) , computer science , linguistics , medicine , philosophy , management , world wide web , economics , radiology
We assessed the effects of removing some constraints that characterise traditional experiments on the effects of spaced, rather than massed, study opportunities. In five experiments-using lists of to-be-remembered words-we examined the effects of how total study time was distributed across multiple repetitions of a given to-be-remembered word. Overall, within a given list, recall profited from study time being distributed (e.g., four 1-s presentations or two 2-s presentations vs one 4-s presentation). Among the implications of these findings is that if students choose to engage in massed studying (by virtue of constraints on their study time or a failure to appreciate the benefits of spaced study sessions), then studying the information twice but for half the time may produce memory benefits in a single study session.