Sans Forgetica is not desirable for learning.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Claims suggest perceptually difficult typefaces like Sans Forgetica enhance student learning.
• Evidence for perceptual disfluency effects on learning is often mixed and requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To rigorously examine the mnemonic effects of the Sans Forgetica typeface.
• To compare Sans Forgetica's impact on learning against other established learning strategies.

Main Methods:

• Three preregistered experiments were conducted.
• Experiment 1: Cued recall of weakly related cue-target pairs (Sans Forgetica vs. missing letters/generation effect).
• Experiment 2: Cued recall of an educational passage (Sans Forgetica vs. pre-highlighting vs. unmodified). Experiment 3: Recognition memory for Sans Forgetica vs. a fluent typeface.

Main Results:

• The generation effect significantly improved recall, but Sans Forgetica showed no memory benefit.
• Pre-highlighting improved recall, while Sans Forgetica did not enhance cued recall compared to unmodified text or pre-highlighting.
• Sans Forgetica did not improve discriminability in an old-new recognition test compared to a fluent typeface.

Conclusions:

• The Sans Forgetica typeface does not confer a learning or memory advantage.
• Perceptual disfluency, specifically through difficult typefaces, is not a reliable strategy for enhancing student learning.
• Findings challenge the purported mnemonic benefits of Sans Forgetica, suggesting it may be 'forgettable'.