The benefits and costs of repeated testing on the learning of face–name pairs in healthy older adults.

We compared the benefits of repeated testing and repeated study on cued recall of unfamiliar face-name pairs in healthy middle-aged and older adults. We extended Karpicke and Roediger's (2008) paradigm to compare the effects of repeated study versus repeated testing after each face-name pair was correctly recalled once. The results from Experiment 1, which provided no feedback during the acquisition phase, yielded a crossover interaction: Middle-aged adults showed the expected benefit of repeated testing, whereas older adults produced a benefit of repeated study. When participants were given feedback in Experiment 2, both middle-aged and older adults benefited from repeated testing. We suggest that for face-name pairs, feedback may be particularly important for individuals who have relatively poor memory to produce benefits from repeated testing.