Individual differences diminish the pretest effect under productive memory conditions

Pretesting, or asking a test question prior to the onset of learning, is a well-established means of enhancing learning. Research on pretesting has focused primarily on direct factual learning outcomes. Yet building a coherent knowledge base also depends on productive memory processes that permit going beyond the information directly given. In the specific productive process of self-derivation through memory integration, individual differences are prominent; verbal comprehension is a consistent predictor. In the current work, we integrated these research trends by testing the extent to which pretesting enhances learning through productive memory processes and the role played by individual differences in verbal comprehension. Across four within-subjects experiments, we assessed the pretest effect after accounting for variability associated with verbal comprehension. In Experiments 1-3, we assessed the productive memory process of self-derivation through memory integration. Adults were more successful on pretest trials compared to control (i.e., no pretest) trials, but this effect was no longer significant after controlling for verbal comprehension. This pattern emerged when we used stem-fact pretests (Experiment 1) and integration-fact pretests (Experiment 2) to probe self-derivation across single-sentence stimuli and replicated when we used stimuli more akin to everyday learning materials (i.e., text passages and photographs; Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, we shifted the test target from productive processes to fact recall and found the pretest effect held even after controlling for verbal comprehension. This research bridges the pretest and productive process literature to provide novel insight into ways of maximizing learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).