Reading focus
Syllabus: How Does Practice Build Skill?
Separate the interstudy gap from the retention interval, then compare this timing manipulation with Shea and Morgan's manipulation of task order. The outcome here is memory for factual answers.
A question to consider. Which parts of the argument would carry over to planning practice for a musical passage, and what additional evidence would be needed before choosing its session spacing?
Why this reading
A practice schedule needs a time horizon: remembering something tomorrow and remembering it months later are different targets. This experiment varies the gap between learning sessions and the delay before testing, making their relationship visible.
Before you read
The interstudy gap separates the first and second learning sessions. The retention interval runs from the second session to the final test. Participants learn factual answers and receive retrieval opportunities and corrective feedback. Recall requires producing an answer; recognition offers alternatives.
Read for
- Map the two intervals before interpreting the results. Separate the delay since the last session from total time since learning began.
- Compare observed recall and recognition across the tested schedules with the fitted model's estimates. Check which intervals were actually studied.
- Examine the internet sample, completion rates, and learning procedure. Consider how selective noncompletion at long delays could limit interpretation.
Consider afterwards
- Two groups use identical gaps between sessions, but one is tested a week later and the other a year later. What would you need to know before calling that gap optimal?
Editorial context
The reported sample comprises 1,354 completers studying facts. The relation between spacing and later retention supports choosing schedules with a target delay in mind; it is not a universal numerical recipe. Factual retention is also a different outcome from executing a motor skill or adapting it to a new setting. Generalizing the timing principle to those outcomes requires evidence about the task and its practice demands.