May 092011
 

Forgetting Curve: Evidence from Medical Education that Quizzes Do Slow the Forgetting Curve Ā 

Forgetting Curve: forgetting curvePosted by John Kleeman, via the Questionmark Blog

Iā€™ve recently come across a really exciting set of results from a study of doctors-in-training that show quizzes really do slow down the forgetting curve.

To remind you, once we learn something, we start to follow a downwards ā€œforgetting curveā€. Psychology research says that taking quizzes and tests can reduce the forgetting curve by giving us retrieval practice, which helps retain information. But itā€™s rare to see this shown in action quite so vividly as in an experiment conducted with doctors-in-training and published in the respected Medical Education journal. (The citation is: Larsen, D. P., Butler, A. C. and Roediger III, H. L. (2009), Repeated testing improves long-term retention relative to repeated study: a randomised controlled trial. Medical Education, 43: 1174ā€“1181.)

In this experiment, Dr Douglas Larsen and colleagues Butler and Roediger from Washington University in St Louis divided some doctors-in- training into two groups of about 20 people each. The doctors were learning about two medical topics : status epilepticusĀ  and myasthenia gravis, abbreviated to SE and MG below.

Group A did the following:

  • Study session on both SE and MG
  • Quiz on SE immediately after the session and equal re-study time spent on MG
  • 2 weeks after study session, quiz on SE and equal re-study time on MG
  • 4 weeks after study session, quiz on SE and equal re-study time on MG
  • 6 months later, test on both SE and MG

Group B did the same with SE and MG switched round, ie

  • Study session on both SE and MG
  • Quiz on MG immediately after the session and equal re-study time spent on SE
  • 2 weeks after study session, quiz on MG and equal re-study time on SE
  • 4 weeks after study session, quiz on MG and equal re-study time on SE
  • 6 months later, test on both SE and MG

If spending time on re-study and taking a quiz have equal benefit to retention, then you would expect that both groups would perform about the same on the final test.

But if taking a quiz does actually aid retention and slow down forgetting, then you would expect that Group A would do better on SE than group B, and that group B would do better on MG than group A.

So what did happen? Here are the results for topic SE; you can see that group A initially scored an average of 78% and then knowledge reduced over time to 42% on the final test. However group B got a final score of 31%, much lower.

forgetting curve

 

And here are the results for topic MG; group B, who did the earlier quizzes/tests on MG, scored an average of 36% on the final test, but group A, whoā€™d just done the studying, got 19%.

forgetting curve

 

These results show very clearly that taking the quizzes/tests helped people retain information vs. spending the same amount of time re-studying. And the study gives a dramatic picture of what happens in real learning ā€“ how people do forget, but also how quizzes and tests can reduce this.

Related posts:

http://tinyurl.com/4xlfoqg

Ā ==================================================================

To Discuss how these Solutions will add value for you, your organization and/or your clients, Affinity/Resale Opportunities, and/or Collaborative Efforts, Please Contact:

Tom McDonald, tsm@centurytel.net; 608-788-5144; Skype: tsmw5752

forgetting curve, McDonald Sales and Marketing, LLC