Retrieval practice can insulate items against intralist interference: Evidence from the list-length effect, output...

This study sought to determine whether nonselective retrieval practice after study can reduce memories' susceptibility to intralist interference, as it is observed in the list-length effect, output interference, and retrieval-induced forgetting. Across 3 experiments, we compared the effects of nonselective retrieval practice and restudy on previously studied material with regard to these 3 forms of episodic forgetting. When study of an item list was followed by a restudy cycle, recall from a longer list was worse than recall from a shorter list (list-length effect), preceding recall of studied nontarget items impaired recall of the list's target items (output interference), and repeated selective retrieval of some list items attenuated recall of other nonretrieved items at test (retrieval-induced forgetting). In contrast, none of these effects arose when study of the list was followed by a nonselective retrieval cycle. The findings are consistent with a combination of contextual variability theory and a variant of study-phase retrieval theory that assumes that retrieval can create more distinct context features for retrieved items than restudy does for restudied items, thus reducing items' susceptibility to interference relative to restudy cycles. The findings add to the view that nonselective retrieval practice can stabilize and consolidate memories.