Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks¶
Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed Practice in Verbal Recall Tasks: A Review and Quantitative Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380.
Cited by¶
7 citations across 7 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Batch Size
- Software development: release cadence (continuous deployment versus quarterly), sprint length, pull-request and code-review size, database batch inserts, CI test batching, and staged feature-flag rollouts. Education and learning: assignment and feedback cadence (weekly quizzes versus midterm-and-final), curriculum chunking, and the massed-versus-spaced practice trade-off.
This sourceEstablishes the spacing effect: distributed (small-batch) practice yields better retention than massed practice.
- Software development: release cadence (continuous deployment versus quarterly), sprint length, pull-request and code-review size, database batch inserts, CI test batching, and staged feature-flag rollouts. Education and learning: assignment and feedback cadence (weekly quizzes versus midterm-and-final), curriculum chunking, and the massed-versus-spaced practice trade-off.
- Prospective Memory
- Public health and policy — vaccination booster schedules, recall notices, tax-filing reminders, the whole infrastructure of deferred-action public services. Education — spaced-repetition schedules implementing encode-now / retrieve-on-schedule as a learning tool; assignment deadlines structuring deferred work.
This sourceReviews spaced-repetition scheduling as a learning tool implementing retrieval on a deferred schedule.
- Public health and policy — vaccination booster schedules, recall notices, tax-filing reminders, the whole infrastructure of deferred-action public services. Education — spaced-repetition schedules implementing encode-now / retrieve-on-schedule as a learning tool; assignment deadlines structuring deferred work.
- Spaced Repetition
- The 2006 analysis (Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis, Psychological Bulletin) quantified effect sizes across spacing parameters: optimal gaps typically ranged from 10-20% of the desired retention interval (if you want to retain information for one year, the optimal final review gap is ~5-12 weeks before the assessment), and longer gaps between review sessions consistently produced better retention than massed or closely-spaced sessions.
This sourceMeta-analytic synthesis (317 experiments) establishing robust spacing-effect benefits for long-term retention; quantitative basis for spaced-practice scheduling in ZPD-aligned review.
- The 2006 analysis (Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis, Psychological Bulletin) quantified effect sizes across spacing parameters: optimal gaps typically ranged from 10-20% of the desired retention interval (if you want to retain information for one year, the optimal final review gap is ~5-12 weeks before the assessment), and longer gaps between review sessions consistently produced better retention than massed or closely-spaced sessions.
- Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
- Early Childhood: Read-aloud selection, emergent-literacy scaffolding, dialogic-reading interaction, Reggio Emilia and Montessori-aligned practices.
This sourceMeta-analytic synthesis (317 experiments) establishing robust spacing-effect benefits for long-term retention; quantitative basis for spaced-practice scheduling in ZPD-aligned review.
- Early Childhood: Read-aloud selection, emergent-literacy scaffolding, dialogic-reading interaction, Reggio Emilia and Montessori-aligned practices.
Mechanisms¶
- Learning Spacing Schedule
- Its strength is that it exploits the spacing effect
This sourceSynthesizes evidence that distributed rather than massed practice improves later retention.
- Its strength is that it exploits the spacing effect
- Short-Term to Long-Term Memory Consolidation Routine
- She reviews the material in expanding intervals — later the same day, two days on, a week on, three weeks on — each pass a reactivation that re-strengthens the traces before they fully fade, exploiting the well-documented spacing effect and the shape of the forgetting curve.
This sourceDistributed practice improves later verbal recall, with benefits depending on both spacing and retention intervals.
- She reviews the material in expanding intervals — later the same day, two days on, a week on, three weeks on — each pass a reactivation that re-strengthens the traces before they fully fade, exploiting the well-documented spacing effect and the shape of the forgetting curve.
- Spaced Exposure Schedule
Verification¶
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