Metacognitive control and spaced practice: clarifying what people do and why

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Learning Sciences

Background:

• Learner control over practice schedules is crucial for effective learning.
• Existing theories predict a decrease in spaced practice preference with increased item difficulty.
• Previous findings were confounded by encoding difficulty, not actual learning difficulty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how learners choose between massed and spaced practice under varying conditions.
• To test predictions from discrepancy-reduction and agenda-based-regulation accounts.
• To determine if learners' choices are strategic and theory-based.

Main Methods:

• Experiments 1 & 2: Assessed practice preference with learning difficulty uncorrelated to encoding difficulty.
• Experiment 3: Varied item difficulty and point value independently.
• Measured relative preference for spaced practice.

Main Results:

• Learners preferred spaced practice more with greater item difficulty in Experiments 1 & 2.
• Preference for spaced practice was higher for high-value items but unaffected by item difficulty in Experiment 3.
• Results contradicted discrepancy-reduction predictions and supported agenda-based-regulation.

Conclusions:

• Learners' practice choices are strategic and influenced by perceived value and learning difficulty.
• Learners demonstrate an understanding of the benefits of spaced practice.
• Agenda-based-regulation better explains learner choices in practice scheduling.