Hypermnesia: the role of repeated testing.

The present study was designed to determine whether the increased recall of pictures across repeated tests (hypermnesia) is due to increasing strength of imaginal traces during the retention interval or to increased retrieval practice from prior tests. Subjects studied 60 pictures and then recalled them after various delays that were filled with instructions and, in two cases, reading a passage. Recall on a first test showed no change with retention interval. With retention interval held constant, however, the number of pictures recalled varied directly with the number of prior tests subjects had been given. This finding points up the critical nature of retrieval factors in producing hypermnesia.