Students everywhere now have one fewer defense against daily and weekly exams, according to research led by Washington University graduate student in psychology Jason Chan.

His study shows that taking tests on a regular basis improves long-term memory and recall ability, even for material not directly tested, a concept referred to as retrieval-induced facilitation.

“One thing we didn’t know was whether taking tests would affect memory for things not on the test,” said Chan. “Teachers can’t possibly cover everything in the textbooks. What happens to the other stuff not tested?”

Chan and his team focused on how studying one subset of a certain topic can improve memory for a different subset of the same topic. They also reported on the disadvantages of cramming and studying the same material repeatedly.

“Restudying can help but its benefits are quite limited,” said Chan. “It helps when the test happens within the next couple of hours. And cramming is quite good for memory in the short term but not in the long run, like a week from now. Constant testing allows recall for a very long time. Once you recall information, it’s very hard to forget.”

He also said students who do cram and reread material too often hurt themselves at the end of the semester when studying for cumulative finals.

“I don’t want to make my claims sound too grand,” said Chan. “On a broader scale, I’m hoping that educators will realize that testing is not just a way to evaluate students but a way to help them learn what you want them to learn. Testing has been getting a bad rap among educators. Students don’t like it. TAs don’t like it. But there are a lot of benefits.”

In addition to supporting more frequent exams, Chan also advocates short answer over multiple-choice questions. He said students tend to look at the answer choices first without thinking through the question, and then let those choices drive their answers.

“In that sense, it’s very unlikely for students to think about other things related to the question at hand,” he said. “Short answer leads people to think about other things about that topic, which also enhances memory about topics not being tested directly.”

Furthermore, Chan argued that students who pick the wrong answer choice are more likely to remember the wrong information in the long term.

While much literature seems to contradict Chan’s findings, he said the conditions of those experiments aren’t relevant to student life. Opposing findings measured recall ability over lists of words in shorter intervals about 20 minutes apart. In reality, however, students take exams further apart and over more meaningful material.

Chan still emphasized the main goal of his research, though.

“My main purpose isn’t to change curriculums, but there will be more research along this pipeline,” he said. “More people will pay attention to it and more people will know about it. I’m very fortunate to have this sort of project picked up by the media.”

Chan worked with Kathleen McDermott and Henry Roediger, III to publish the paper three months ago. They conducted their research over the past 18 months using undergraduate subjects at the University. The study was published in last month’s issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

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