Multiple-choice testing: Controlled and automatic influences of retrieval practice in an educational context

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Learning Sciences

Background:

• Initial testing impacts subsequent performance through automatic and controlled cognitive processes.
• Understanding these influences is key to optimizing learning strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interplay of automatic and controlled processes in multiple-choice (MC) testing.
• To examine how factors like item repetition and testing environment affect these influences.

Main Methods:

• Conducted online experiments (MTurk) and a university classroom study.
• Varied factors including item relatedness, item repetition, time lags, and feedback.

Main Results:

• Automatic influences often dominated online MC tests, even with educational materials.
• Repeated items and longer time lags amplified automatic influences.
• In a university setting without repeated items, controlled influences were more prominent, similar to cued recall tests.

Conclusions:

• Both automatic and controlled retrieval practice influence performance on multiple-choice and cued recall tests.
• The dominance of automatic versus controlled processes depends on item repetition, test format, and motivation.