Retention of prose materials as a function of postacquisition testing.

One-week prose retention was examined as a function of four activities immediately following reading. Completion questions as an immediate activity with knowledge of results produced significantly better delayed retention than did questions without knowledge of results or presentation of statements equivalent in information to the questions with knowledge of results. These three conditions yielded performance significantly superior to the nonactivity control. Knowledge of results did not increase retention for correctly answered immediate questions, and it significantly increased delayed performance for immediate questions incorrectly answered. The immediate activity facilitation findings were attributed to two processes, practice at retrieval of stored information and addition of answers to items not recallable immediately after reading. No delayed retention difference occurred between passage information and equivalent randomly presented statements. The experiment reported in this article was concerned with how delayed retention is influenced by testing or test-related procedures that are employed immediately after reading prose materials. Spitzer (1939) reported that delayed retention was facilitated by immediate testing, a result he interpreted by maintaining that the test trial should be regarded as an additional learning trial which in turn produces superior retention. Subsequently, however, Sones and Stroud (1940) demonstrated that when delayed retention performance is compared between a condition which received a test trial immediately after learning and a condition in which a learning trial was presented in place of a test trial, differential delayed effects were obtained. Specifically, it was This research was supported by the Learning Research and Development Center, supported in