Sean Kang | The University of Melbourne University (original) (raw)

Papers by Sean Kang

Journal of Educational Psychology, 2011

Taking a test has been shown to produce enhanced retention of the retrieved information. On tests... more Taking a test has been shown to produce enhanced retention of the retrieved information. On tests, however, students often encounter questions the answers for which they are unsure. Should they guess anyway, even if they are likely to answer incorrectly? Or are errors engrained, impairing subsequent learning of the correct answer? We sought to answer this question in 3 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects read 80 obscure facts (e.g., "Where is Disko Island? Greenland") and then took a cued recall test. When a subject reported being unable to answer a question, on a randomly chosen half of those questions the computer program insisted upon a guess. Corrective feedback was provided either immediately (Experiment 1) or after a delay (Experiment 2). Forced guessing did not affect subjects' performance on a final test given 1 day later. We extended the investigation to more complex material in Experiment 3. Subjects saw a question (e.g., "Why do ice cubes often pop as they melt in your drink?") and its answer, but for half of the questions, subjects did not see the answer until they first provided a plausible explanation. On a test administered either on the same day or 1 week later, recall performance was again unaffected by a prior wrong guess.

Routledge eBooks, Mar 15, 2021

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Jul 1, 2007

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Aug 1, 2009

Whether readers have strategic control over the processes that are engaged when reading letter st... more Whether readers have strategic control over the processes that are engaged when reading letter strings aloud is a matter of debate in visual word-recognition research (see, e.g.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 2009

Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) reported a series of experiments in which processing unre... more Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) reported a series of experiments in which processing unrelated words in terms of their relevance to a grasslands survival scenario led to better retention relative to other semantic processing tasks. The impetus for their study was the premise that human memory systems evolved under the selection pressures of our ancestral past. In 3 experiments, we extended this functional approach to investigate the congruity effect-the common finding that people remember items better if those items are congruent with the way in which they are processed. Experiment 1 was a replication of Nairne et al.'s (2007) experiment and showed congruity effects in the survival processing paradigm. To avoid potential itemselection artifacts from randomly selected words, we manipulated congruence between words and processing condition in Experiments 2 and 3. As expected, final recall was highest when the type of processing and the materials were congruent, indicating that people remember stimuli better if the stimuli are congruent with the goals associated with their processing. However, contrary to our predictions, no survival processing advantage emerged between the 2 congruent conditions or for a list of irrelevant words. When congruity was controlled in a mixed list design, the survival processing advantage disappeared.

Applied Cognitive Psychology, Nov 1, 2008

Two experiments examined the testing effect with open-book tests, in which students view notes an... more Two experiments examined the testing effect with open-book tests, in which students view notes and textbooks while taking the test, and closed-book tests, in which students take the test without viewing notes or textbooks. Subjects studied prose passages and then restudied or took an open-or closed-book test. Taking either kind of test, with feedback, enhanced long-term retention relative to conditions in which subjects restudied material or took a test without feedback. Open-book testing led to better initial performance than closed-book testing, but this benefit did not persist and both types of testing produced equivalent retention on a delayed test. Subjects predicted they would recall more after repeated studying, even though testing enhanced long-term retention more than restudying. These experiments demonstrate that the testing effect occurs with both open-and closedbook tests, and that subjects fail to predict the effectiveness of testing relative to studying in enhancing later recall.

In a study on the effects of incorrect guessing on subsequently learning from feedback, we found ... more In a study on the effects of incorrect guessing on subsequently learning from feedback, we found confidence for wrong responses on an initial test was positively associated with correct final recall (higher confidence errors corrected better; Butterfield & Metcalfe, 2001). One explanation for this hypercorrection effect is that subjects are surprised by their error and thus pay more attention to the feedback (Fazio & Marsh, 2009). Inconsistent with this surprise hypothesis, however, was our finding that the decision to volunteer a low-confidence guess, even when the response was wrong, was associated with better subsequent learning of the correct answer than when a response/guess was withheld. We propose that the willingness to venture a guess, even when confidence is low, may reflect a higher state of learning, relative to choosing to omit a response. We present additional behavioral data and an error-correction neural network model in support of our alternative hypothesis.

Educational Psychology Review, Aug 4, 2012

Every day students and instructors are faced with the decision of when to study information. The ... more Every day students and instructors are faced with the decision of when to study information. The timing of study, and how it affects memory retention, has been explored for many years in research on human learning. This research has shown that performance on final tests of learning is improved if multiple study sessions are separated-i.e., "spaced" apart-in time rather than massed in immediate succession. In this article, we review research findings of the types of learning that benefit from spaced study, demonstrations of these benefits in educational settings, and recent research on the time intervals during which spaced study should occur in order to maximize memory retention. We conclude with a list of recommendations on how spacing might be incorporated into everyday instruction.

Is learning of a complex functional relationship enhanced by trying to predict what output will g... more Is learning of a complex functional relationship enhanced by trying to predict what output will go with a given input, as compared to studying an input-output pair? We examined learning of a bilinear function and transfer to new items outside of the trained range. Subjects either saw the input-output pairs (Study-only condition) or attempted to guess the output, then saw the pair (Test/Study condition). Total study time was equated and motivation was enhanced with a monetary bonus. Performance was markedly better for the Test/Study condition, both within the trained range and in the transfer test. This benefit of testing during training was observed on a criterial test administered shortly after training. Testing has long been shown to enhance the explicit learning and retention of verbal material; our present findings reveal a novel domain for which testing can also be advantageous-i.e., function learning. Effects of Testing 3 Effects of Testing on Learning of Functions Studies of ...

Memory & Cognition, 2020

During learning, interleaving exemplars from different categories (e.g., ABCBCACAB) rather than b... more During learning, interleaving exemplars from different categories (e.g., ABCBCACAB) rather than blocking by category (e.g., AAABBBCCC) often enhances inductive learning, especially when the categories are highly similar. However, when allowed to select their own study schedules, learners overwhelmingly tend to block rather than interleave. Category similarity has been shown to moderate the relative benefit of interleaved versus blocked study. We investigated whether learners were sensitive to category similarity when choosing exemplars for study, and whether these choices predicted their learning outcomes. In Experiment 1 , learners interleaved more often when the categories were highly similar (difficult to discriminate from each other), compared with when similarity was low. In Experiment 2 , learners were presented with two sets of categories to learn; categories within each set were similar to each other, but categories were dissimilar across sets. When learners chose to interle...

Deciding Whether or Not to Guess the Answer Predicts Subsequent Learning Sean Kang UCSD Michael M... more Deciding Whether or Not to Guess the Answer Predicts Subsequent Learning Sean Kang UCSD Michael Mozer University of Colorado Harold Pashler UCSD Abstract: In a study on the effects of incorrect guessing on subsequently learning from feedback, we found confidence for wrong responses on an initial test was positively associated with correct final recall (higher confidence errors corrected better; Butterfield & Metcalfe, 2001). One explanation for this hypercorrection effect is that subjects are surprised by their error and thus pay more attention to the feedback (Fazio & Marsh, 2009). Inconsistent with this surprise hypothesis, however, was our finding that the decision to volunteer a low-confidence guess, even when the response was wrong, was associated with better subsequent learning of the correct answer than when a response/guess was withheld. We propose that the willingness to venture a guess, even when confidence is low, may reflect a higher state of learning, relative to choosi...

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Concern that students in the United States are less proficient in mathematics, science, and readi... more Concern that students in the United States are less proficient in mathematics, science, and reading than their peers in other countries has led some to question whether American students spend enough time in school. Instead of debating the amount of time that should be spent in school (and on schoolwork), this article addresses how the available instructional time might be optimally utilized via the scheduling of review or practice. Hundreds of studies in cognitive and educational psychology have demonstrated that spacing out repeated encounters with the material over time produces superior long-term learning, compared with repetitions that are massed together. Also, incorporating tests into spaced practice amplifies the benefits. Spaced review or practice enhances diverse forms of learning, including memory, problem solving, and generalization to new situations. Spaced practice is a feasible and cost-effective way to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning, and has tre...

The idea of a memory test or of a test of academic achievement is often circumscribed. Tests with... more The idea of a memory test or of a test of academic achievement is often circumscribed. Tests within the classroom are recognized as important for the assignment of grades, and tests given for academic assessment or achievement have increasingly come to determine the course of children's lives: score well on such tests and you advance, are placed in more challenging classes, and attend better schools. Against this widely acknowledged backdrop of the importance of testing in educational life (not just in the US, but all over the world), it would be difficult to justify the claim that testing is not used enough in educational practice. In fact, such a claim may seem to be ludicrous on the face of it. However, this is just the claim we will make in this chapter: Education in schools would greatly benefit from additional testing, and the need for increased testing probably increases with advancement in the educational system. In addition, students should use self-testing as a study strategy in preparing for their classes. Now, having begun with an inflammatory claim-we need more testing in education-let us explain what we mean and back up our claims. First, we are not recommending increased use of standardized tests in education, which is usually what people think of when they hear the words "testing in education." Rather, we have in mind the types of assessments (tests, essays, exercises) given in the classroom or assigned for homework. The reason we advocate testing is that it requires students to retrieve information effortfully from memory, and such effortful retrieval turns out to be a wonderfully powerful mnemonic device in many circumstances. Tests have both indirect and direct effects on learning (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b). The indirect effect is that, if tests are given more frequently, students study more. Consider a college class in which there is only a midterm and a final exam compared to a similar class in which weekly quizzes are given every Friday, in addition to the midterm and the final. A large research program is not required to determine that students study more in the class with weekly quizzes than in the class without them. Yet tests also have a direct effect on learning; many studies have shown that students' retrieval of information on tests greatly improves their later retention of the tested This chapter is for the use of the author only. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Davies &

Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2009

The extent to which readers can exert strategic control over oral reading processes is a matter o... more The extent to which readers can exert strategic control over oral reading processes is a matter of debate. According to the pathway control hypothesis, the relative contributions of the lexical and nonlexical pathways can be modulated by the characteristics of the context stimuli being read, but an alternative time criterion model is also a viable explanation of past results. In Experiment 1, subjects named high- and low-frequency regular words in the context of either low-frequency exception words (e.g., PINT) or nonwords (e.g., FLIRP). Frequency effects (faster pronunciation latencies for high-frequency words) were attenuated in the nonword context, consistent with the notion that nonwords emphasize the characteristics of the frequency-insensitive nonlexical pathway. Importantly, we also assessed memory for targets, and a similar attenuation of the frequency effect in recognition memory was observed in the nonword condition. Converging evidence was obtained in a second experiment in which a variable more sensitive to the nonlexical pathway (orthographic neighborhood size) was manipulated. The results indicated that both speeded pronunciation performance and memory performance was relatively attenuated in the low-frequency exception word context compared to the nonword context. The opposing influences of list context type for word frequency and orthographic neighborhood size effects in speeded pronunciation and memory performance provide strong support for the pathway control model, compared to the time criterion model.

Memory

Although previous research on retrieval practice (RP) has predominantly featured stimuli with dis... more Although previous research on retrieval practice (RP) has predominantly featured stimuli with discrete right-or-wrong answers, continuous measures offer potentially greater sensitivity in assessing the effects of RP on memory precision. The present study used a colour gradient (125 points ranging from magenta to yellow) as a continuous response variable. The colours of different images were learned through either RP or restudy and either one or three cycles of practice after initial study. On a delayed final test, participants' memory was assessed for each item's colour. Participants also created per-item intervals representing the region where they believed the correct colour most likely to have been. We found that repeated rounds of RP enhanced the correspondence between responses and the correct colour. In addition, RP led to participants creating more accurate (correct answers were more likely to be within the participant-specified intervals) and more precise (narrower) intervals relative to restudy, suggesting that RP enhances the precision of memories.