Cepeda, N. J., Vul, E., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., & Pashler, H. (2008). Spacing effects in learning: A temporal ridgeline of optimal retention. Psychological Science, 19, 1095-1102. [898k pdf]

To achieve enduring retention, people must usually study information on multiple occasions. How does the timing of study events affect retention? Prior research has examined this issue only in a spotty fashion, usually with very short time intervals. To characterize spacing effects over significant durations, over 1350 individuals were taught a set of facts and – after a gap of up to 3.5 months – given a review on the same facts. A final test was administered at a further delay of up to 1 year. At any given retention interval, an increase in the inter-study gap at first increased, and then gradually reduced, test performance. The optimum gap value was about 20% of the test delay for delays of a few weeks, falling to about 5% when delay was one year. The interaction of gap and test delay implies that many educational practices are likely to be highly inefficient.

in press (cited by 2)

• Gerbier, E., & Koenig, O. (in press). Influence of multiple-day temporal distribution of repetitions on memory: A comparison of uniform, expanding, and contracting schedules. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
• Vlach, H. A., Ankowski, A. A., & Sandhofer, C. M. (in press). At the same time or apart in time? The role of presentation timing and retrieval dynamics in generalization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

2012 (cited by 1)

• Bergin, C. C., & Bergin, D. A. (2012). Child and adolescent development in your classroom. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

2011 (cited by 10)

• Finley, J. R., Benjamin, A. S., Hays, M. J., Bjork, R. A., & Kornell, N. (2011). Benefits of accumulating versus diminishing cues in recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 289-298.
• Kerfoot, B. P., Shaffer, K., McMahon, G. T., Baker, H., Kirdar, J., Kanter, S., Corbett, E. C., Berkow, R., Krupat, E., & Armstrong, E. G. (2011). Online "spaced education progress-testing" of students to confront two upcoming challenges to medical schools. Academic Medicine, 86, 300-306.
• Kornmeier, J., & Sosic-Vasic, Z. (2011). Brain gym - can we get a schedule for efficient learning? Nervenheilkunde, 30, 613-620.
• Molesworth, B. R. C., Man, H. T., & Kehoe E. J. (2011). Rehearsal and verbal reminders in facilitating compliance with safety rules. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 43, 991-997.
• Morrow, L. M. (2011). Teaching the alphabet. Huntington Beach, CA: Shell Education.
• Pyc, M. A., & Rawson, K. A. (2011). Costs and benefits of dropout schedules of test-restudy practice: Implications for student learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 87-95.
• Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2010). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 20-27.
• Roediger, H. L., & Butler, A. C. (2011). Paradoxes of learning and memory. In N. Kapur, A. Pascual-Leone, & V. Ramachandran (Eds.), The paradoxical brain (pp. 151-176). New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Sobel, H. S., Cepeda, N. J., & Kapler, I. V. (2011). Spacing effects in real-world classroom vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25, 763-767.
• Straumanis, J. (2011). The science of learning: Breaking news. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 5, 251-255.

2010 (cited by 14)

• Arthur, W., Day, E. A., Villado, A. J., Boatman, P. R., Kowollik, V., Bennett, W., & Bhupatkar, A. (2010). The effect of distributed practice on immediate posttraining, and long-term performance on a complex command-and-control simulation task. Human Performance, 23, 428-445.
• Benjamin, A. S., & Tullis, J. (2010). What makes distributed practice effective? Cognitive Psychology, 61, 228-247.
• Bird, S. (2010). Effects of distributed practice on the acquisition of second language English syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 635-650.
• Buschkuehl, M., & Jaeggi, S. M. (2010). Improving intelligence: A literature review. Swiss Medical Weekly, 140, 266-272.
• Davachi, L., Kiefer, T., Rock, D., & Rock, L. (2010). Learning that lasts through AGES. NeuroLeadership Journal.
• Delaney, P. F., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., & Spirgel, A. (2010). Spacing and testing effects: A deeply critical, lengthy, and at times discursive review of the literature. In Psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory, Vol. 53 (pp. 63-147).
• Kerfoot, B. P. (2010). Adaptive spaced education improves learning efficiency: A randomized controlled study. The Journal of Urology, 183, 678-681.
• Kerfoot, B. P., Lawler, E. V., Sokolovskaya, G., Gagnon, D., & Conlin, P. R. (2010). Durable improvements in prostate cancer screening from online spaced education: A randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 39, 472-478.
• Kupper-Tetzel, C. E. (2010). Storage and retrieval processes in the distributed practice effect: From laboratory to educational settings. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Mannheim.
• Lindsey, R., Mozer, M. C., Cepeda, N. J., & Pashler, H. (2009). Optimizing memory retention with cognitive models. In A. Howes, D. Peebles, & R. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM). Manchester, UK.
• Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2010). Recent research on human learning challenges conventional instructional strategies. Educational Researcher, 39, 406-412.
• Smith, T. A., & Kimball, D. R. (2010). Learning from feedback: Spacing and the delay-retention effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 80-95.
• Taylor, K., & Rohrer, D. (2010). The effects of interleaved practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24, 837-848.
• Vul, E. (2010). Sampling in human cognition. Cognitive Science Society.

2009 (cited by 7)

• Cepeda, N. J., Coburn, N., Rohrer, D., Wixted, J. T., Mozer, M. C., & Pashler, H. (2009). Optimizing distributed practice: Theoretical analysis and practical implications. Experimental Psychology, 56, 236-246.
• Glass, A. L. (2009). The effect of distributed questioning with varied examples on exam performance on inference questions. Educational Psychology, 29. 831-848.
• Lindsey, R., Mozer, M. C., Cepeda, N. J., & Pashler, H. (2009). Optimizing memory retention with cognitive models. In A. Howes, D. Peebles, & R. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM). Manchester, UK.
• Mozer, M. C., Pashler, H., Cepeda, N. J., Lindsey, R., & Vul, E. (2009). Predicting the optimal spacing of study: A multiscale context model of memory. In Y. Bengio, D. Schuurmans, J. Lafferty, C. K. I. Williams, & A. Culotta (Eds.), Advances in Neural Information Systems 22. La Jolla, CA: Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation.
• Pyc, M. A., & Rawson, K. A. (2009). Costs and benefits of dropout schedules of test-restudy practice: Implications for student learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology.
• Rohrer, D. (2009). The effects of spacing and mixing practice problems. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 40, 4-17.
• van Rijn, H., van Maanen, L., & van Woudenberg, M. (2009). Passing the test: Improving learning gains by balancing spacing and testing effects. In A. Howes, D. Peebles, & R. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM). Manchester, UK.

2008 (cited by 1)

• Dirksen, G. (2008). BCL-model helpt supervisor en supervisant. Supervisie en Coaching, 25, 246-263.