Are They REALLY Doing Retrieval Practice?!

To What Extent Does Retrieval Practice Intervention Reduce Metacognitive Biases Towards Conductance of Retrieval Practice During Independent Revision in Post-16 Students?

J Wainman - Chartered College of Teaching Educational Inquiry

Retrieval practice, characterised by the frequent revisitation of lesson material, stands out as significantly more effective than re-studying for enhancing long-term retention (Moreira et al., 2019; Agarwal, 2019; Kapricke et al., 2016). Various techniques such as active recall, quizzes, and flashcard testing are commonly employed for retrieval practice (Weinstein, 2018). Additionally, strategies such as spaced retrieval and interleaving, involving varying intervals and mixing up concepts, have been found to enhance learning outcomes (Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011; Lyle et al., 2020; Sana & Yan, 2022).

However, despite the benefits of retrieval practice, it is common for students to be misled by particular metacognitive biases and illusions during the learning process (Finn and Tauber 2015). These metacognitive illusions may impact students’ awareness of what effective learning strategies are, for instance, students might be making inaccurate judgments about what material they understand and using confidence as their sole indicator of whether accurate knowledge is retained (Bjork et al. 2013; Finn and Tauber 2015; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). This metacognitive judgement by students has been argued to be due to their susceptibility to processing fluency, as students will be more confident in learning something if the material is processed with ease (Finn and Tauber 2015; Carpenter et al. 2020). It is also apparent in students’ educational experience that material that increases student engagement and enthusiasm, may hinder their ability to make effective judgement on their learning. For instance, students were found to claim they had learnt more from a ‘fluent’  teacher who used appropriate voice dynamics, mobility of space and non-verbal gestures compared to a ‘disfluent’ teacher, despite learning being similar across both conditions (Toftness et al. 2018; Carpenter et al. 2020). It was concluded from such papers that student evaluations of teacher effectiveness are not a reliable indicator of learning and forms one of many ‘illusions of learning’ possessed by students (Carpenter et al. 2020).  

Other researchers have noted that students may simply judge that they understand certain material after reading multiple times, with the absence of any testing, despite the clear evidence in literature on the benefits of retrieval strategies (Tai et al. 2018; Agarwal 2019; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). For example, rereading and highlighting have been shown to be extremely popular revision strategies for students (Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). Some researchers argue that these are adopted due to the metacognitive biases that students’ possess such as processing fluency (Finn & Tauber 2015), with others believing that these are due to influence of unreliable indicators of learning such as confidence (Carpenter et al. 2020). Interestingly however, these metacognitive illusions are found to be less prominent in high achieving students, as they may use more adaptive strategies compared to lower achieving students (Hartwig & Dulonsky 2012; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). 

However, despite the evidence put forward, there have been arguments to suggest that the notion of metacognitive illusion has limited explanatory power due to the overemphasis on cognitive effectiveness (Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). For instance, research has not been fully encompassing a self-regulated learning perspective, with emphasis being placed on different learning contexts and types of courses, as well as personal factors such as gender and individual differences (Vermunt 2005; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021).

This has been somewhat explored however in other papers, for instance Avhustiuk et al. (2018), where personal, cognitive, metacognitive and individual psychological characteristics of students were investigated. They found that metacognitive judgements are dependent on the types of information, as well as length, style and type of task (Avhustiuk et al. 2018). In addition, gender and age differences were minimal, apart from overconfidence, where women were more likely to possess this metacognitive bias, perhaps further supporting Carpenter et al. (2020) in their research on overconfidence (Avhustiuk et al. 2018). Lastly, Avhustiuk et al. (2018) identified that those with lower academic achievements typically showed more metacognitive illusion, thus supporting previously mentioned claims (Hartwig & Dulonsky 2012; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). It can be further mentioned that studies mentioned into metacognitive illusion, have been focused heavily on a higher education setting, as opposed to the desired impact of this inquiry which focuses secondary education (Finn and Tauber 2015; Carpenter et al. 2020; Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021).  

As previously mentioned, metacognitive biases and illusions lead students to believe that certain revision strategies are more useful than perhaps other well researched alternatives (Cervin-Ellqvist et al. 2021). Karpicke and Nunes (2015) posit that it is due to these metacognitive judgements and illusions that students are not aware of the large benefits of retrieval practice as they do not believe that it would promote long-term learning. This was found in their study, whereby students who conducted re-studying believed they were going to perform better than using retrieval practice, despite their performance actually proving the opposite (Karpicke & Nunes 2015). It has been argued that this has been due to a disconnect in students’ understanding between metacognition, namely the monitoring process of their revision, with understanding of how memory works (Rivers 2021). This has been supported in self-report studies, where students have been found to rate re-reading and re-copying notes as more effective than practice testing (Anthenien et al. 2018; Rivers 2021). This may be helpfully explained by the metacognitive biases that students possess, for instance they may believe that retrieval practice is not as effective or that it is only appropriate for certain types of material or learning environments (Tullis and Maddox 2020; Rivers 2021). These decisions on whether to conduct retrieval practice may link to the previously discussed notion of processing fluency, in that retrieval practice requires significantly more mental effort than other revision techniques (Finn and Tauber 2015; Palmer et al. 2019; Carpenter et al. 2020; Rivers 2021). 

Alternatively, suggestions have been made that metacognitive judgements surrounding how students conduct retrieval practice may also be suboptimal (Rivers 2021). For instance, students may prefer to conduct retrieval practice when recalling easier material but will use restudying for more difficult material (Toppino et al. 2018; Rivers 2021). A further finding indicated that students were more likely to conduct retrieval practice on recently learnt material compared to those that have not been recently studied, despite the evidence of spaced retrieval whereby spacing intervals can optimise long-term memory retention (Karpicke & Bauernschmidt 2011; Toppino et al. 2018; Agarwal 2019). This may link also to the metacognitive bias of overconfidence, whereby students will choose to conduct retrieval practice on something they have recently learnt, as this will more likely to increase in quantity of recall (Topinno et al. 2018; Carpenter et al. 2020).  

From the literature it is clear that students are subject to metacognitive biases and illusions, which impacts their ability to conduct effective revision strategies, therefore warranting the need for interventions (Rivers 2021). For instance, research has suggested that direct instruction about effective revision strategies has led to changes in learners’ beliefs and behaviour (Bernacki et al. 2020; Rivers 2021). This has been further supported during interventions where students were given a list of strategies to use, which led to more conductance of retrieval practice (Geller et al. 2017). It has been further suggested in McDaniel and Einstein (2020) theoretical framework that students must have the correct knowledge about the strategy and belief that it works, as well as commitment to the strategy and appropriate planning to execute it (Rivers 2021). This framework informed the study by Biwer et al. (2020), where they found that after an intervention, there were significant positive effects on knowledge about effective learning strategies such as retrieval practice.  

References and useful papers:

Agarwal, P.K., 2019. Retrieval practice & Bloom’s taxonomy: Do students need fact knowledge before higher order learning?. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(2), p.189. 

Ariel, R. and Karpicke, J.D., 2018. Improving self-regulated learning with a retrieval practice intervention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 24(1), p.43. 

Avhustiuk, M.M., Pasichnyk, I.D. and Kalamazh, R.V., 2018. The illusion of knowing in metacognitive monitoring: Effects of the type of information and of personal, cognitive, metacognitive, and individual psychological characteristics. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 14(2), p.317. 

Bernacki, M. L., Vosicka, L., & Utz, J. C. (2020). Can a brief, digital skill training intervention help undergraduates “learn to learn” and improve their STEM achievement? Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(4), 765–781. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000405 

Biwer, F., oude Egbrink, M.G., Aalten, P. and de Bruin, A.B., 2020. Fostering effective learning strategies in higher education–a mixed-methods study. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9(2), pp.186-203.  

Bjork, R.A., Dunlosky, J. and Kornell, N., 2013. Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual review of psychology, 64, pp.417-444. 

Burgess, S.R. and Murray, A.B., 2014. Use of Traditional and Smartphone App Flashcards in an Introductory Psychology Class. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 13. 

Carpenter, S.K., Witherby, A.E. and Tauber, S.K., 2020. On students’(mis) judgments of learning and teaching effectiveness. Journal of Applied research in Memory and cognition, 9(2), pp.137-151. 

Cervin-Ellqvist, M., Larsson, D., Adawi, T., Stöhr, C. and Negretti, R., 2021. Metacognitive illusion or self-regulated learning? Assessing engineering students’ learning strategies against the backdrop of recent advances in cognitive science. Higher Education, 82(3), pp.477-498. 

Finn, B. and Tauber, S.K., 2015. When confidence is not a signal of knowing: How students’ experiences and beliefs about processing fluency can lead to miscalibrated confidence. Educational Psychology Review, 27, pp.567-586 

Flavell, J.H., 1979. Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American psychologist, 34(10), p.906. 

Geller, J., Toftness, A.R., Armstrong, P.I., Carpenter, S.K., Manz, C.L., Coffman, C.R. and Lamm, M.H., 2018. Study strategies and beliefs about learning as a function of academic achievement and achievement goals. Memory, 26(5), pp.683-690. 

Hartwig, M.K. and Dunlosky, J., 2012. Study strategies of college students: Are self-testing and scheduling related to achievement?. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 19, pp.126-134. 

Karpicke, J. D., & Grimaldi, P. J. (2012). Retrieval-based learning: A perspective for enhancing meaningful learning. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 401–418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-012-9202-2. 

Karpicke, J.D. and Bauernschmidt, A., 2011. Spaced retrieval: absolute spacing enhances learning regardless of relative spacing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(5), p.1250. 

Karpicke, J.D., Blunt, J.R. and Smith, M.A., 2016. Retrieval-based learning: Positive effects of retrieval practice in elementary school children. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, p.350. 

Lyle, K.B., Bego, C.R., Hopkins, R.F., Hieb, J.L. and Ralston, P.A., 2020. How the amount and spacing of retrieval practice affect the short-and long-term retention of mathematics knowledge. Educational Psychology Review, 32, pp.277-295. 

McDaniel, M.A. and Butler, A.C., 2011. A contextual framework for understanding when difficulties are desirable. Successful remembering and successful forgetting: A festschrift in honor of Robert A. Bjork, pp.175-198. 

Mekala, S. and Radhakrishnan, G., 2019. Promoting Self-Regulated Learning Through Metacognitive Strategies. IUP Journal of Soft Skills, 13(2). 

Mevarech, Z. and Kramarski, B., 2014. Critical maths for innovative societies: The role of metacognitive pedagogies. 

Moreira, B.F.T., Pinto, T.S.S., Starling, D.S.V. and Jaeger, A., 2019, February. Retrieval practice in classroom settings: a review of applied research. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 4, p. 5). Frontiers. 

Palmer, S., Chu, Y. and Persky, A.M., 2019. Comparison of rewatching class recordings versus retrieval practice as post-lecture learning strategies. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83(9), p.7217. 

Perry, J., Lundie, D. and Golder, G., 2019. Metacognition in schools: what does the literature suggest about the effectiveness of teaching metacognition in schools?. Educational Review, 71(4), pp.483-500. 

Rivers, M.L., 2021. Metacognition about practice testing: A review of learners’ beliefs, monitoring, and control of test-enhanced learning. Educational Psychology Review, 33(3), pp.823-862. 

Roediger, H.L. and Butler, A.C., 2011. The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15(1), pp.20-27. 

Sana, F. and Yan, V.X., 2022. Interleaving retrieval practice promotes science learning. Psychological Science, 33(5), pp.782-788. 

Study -  Karpicke, J.D. and Roediger, H.L., III (2008) The critical importance of retrieval for learning. Science 15, 966–968 

Tai, J., Ajjawi, R., Boud, D., Dawson, P. and Panadero, E., 2018. Developing evaluative judgement: enabling students to make decisions about the quality of work. Higher education, 76, pp.467-481. 

Toftness, A.R., Carpenter, S.K., Geller, J., Lauber, S., Johnson, M. and Armstrong, P.I., 2018. Instructor fluency leads to higher confidence in learning, but not better learning. Metacognition and Learning, 13, pp.1-14. 

Toppino, T.C., LaVan, M.H. and Iaconelli, R.T., 2018. Metacognitive control in self-regulated learning: Conditions affecting the choice of restudying versus retrieval practice. Memory & Cognition, 46, pp.1164-1177. 

Tullis, J.G. and Maddox, G.B., 2020. Self-reported use of retrieval practice varies across age and domain. Metacognition and Learning, 15, pp.129-154. 

Vermunt, J.D., 2005. Relations between student learning patterns and personal and contextual factors and academic performance. Higher education, 49, pp.205-234. 

Weinstein, Y., Madan, C.R. and Sumeracki, M.A., 2018. Teaching the science of learning. Cognitive research: principles and implications, 3(1), pp.1-17. 

Yan, V.X., Bjork, E.L. and Bjork, R.A., 2016. On the difficulty of mending metacognitive illusions: A priori theories, fluency effects, and misattributions of the interleaving benefit. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(7), p.918.