Effects of immediate recall trial on one-year delayed recall performance in Rey complex figure test

This study aimed to examine the effects of the presence or absence of an immediate recall trial on university students' (n = 39) performance on the one-year delayed recall test in the Rey complex figure test (RCFT). Participants were divided into two groups that took either one or two tests, respectively. In the first year, the participants in the two-test condition completed a copy trial and an immediate recall trial, whereas those in the one-test condition underwent the copy trial only. In the second year, all participants completed a delayed recall test. Those in the two-test condition showed significantly higher scores than those in the one-test condition on the one-year delayed recall test. Thus, we found that omitting the immediate recall trial caused a decline in performance on the one-year delayed recall test. The relevance of these findings to the relationship with testing effects (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006 ) was considered.