Individual differences in the effects of retrieval from long-term memory

The current study examined individual differences in the effects of retrieval from long-term memory (i.e., the testing effect). The effects of retrieving frommemorymake tested informationmore accessible for future retrieval attempts. Despite the broad applied ramifications of such a potent memorization technique there is a paucity of research tailored toward scrutinizing variability in the effect. Multiple measures of working memory capacity, attention control, episodic memory, and general-fluid intelligence were collected in addition to performance in a standard paired-associate testing task. A testing effect was observed and there was a great deal of individual variability in the magnitude of the effect. This variability was best accounted for by memory and intelligence constructs. Furthermore, the pattern of results is consistent with the notion that students with poor memory abilities and lower general-fluid intelligence benefit more so from testing memory than high ability students. Published by Elsevier Inc. ‘‘The relationship between test scores and school performance seems to be ubiquitous. Wherever it has been studied, children with high scores on tests of intelligence tend to learn more of what is taught in school than their lower scoring peers. There may be styles of teaching and methods of instruction that will decrease this correlation, but none that consistently eliminates it has yet been found. . .’’ – Neisser et al. (1996, p. 82)