Testing Promote Transfer with Authentic Educational Materials

In the present study, we were interested in examining whether testing of text material enhances memory (i.e., remember questions), learning (i.e., application questions), or both. We examined the benefits of testing relative to a commonly practiced study technique (i.e., highlighting) using authentic educational materials. Specifically, participants studied a chapter on social psychology using either a testing or highlighting strategy and returned a week later to complete a final test that consisted of three different types of questions: 1) applications taken from the quiz (quiz-verbatim), 2) applications taken from the text (text-verbatim), or 3) new application questions about the tested concepts (transfer). Because we were interested in examining how well people are able to transfer knowledge from one context to another, both the initial and final tests consisted of only application questions. Depending on whether testing enhances only retention or also higher order learning, different predictions can be made