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cycles but decreasingly differentiated between high and low associative strength
pairs across free recall study-test cycles. Thus, experience with the nature of a
specific test format and the effectiveness of their metacognitive control led learners
to increasingly adopt more effective encoding strategies and study-time allocation
strategies.
Another demonstration of improved metacognitive control via experience is
provided by deWinstanley and Bjork (2004). They investigated the possibility
of enhancing learners' sensitivity to the advantages of generating versus read-
ing to-be-learned words. The generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978) is the
well established finding that information generated by a learner tends to be bet-
ter remembered than information merely read by the learner. In the experiments by
deWinstanley and Bjork, learners completed two study-test cycles. Materials were
sentences from an introductory psychology textbook in which critical words were
either printed in red in their entirety (read condition) or printed in red with sev-
eral letters missing (generate condition). Tests were fill-in-the blank recall that used
previously studied phrases from which critical words had been removed and did
not provide feedback. Results of the first experiment indicated that when learners
were given a chance to experience the differential performance benefits (on the first
test) for generated versus read items, they improved their subsequent performance
(on the second test) for read items to the level of the generated items; this suggests
that learners spontaneously, and adaptively, changed the way they processed the
read items. This result was not obtained when learners were not given the critical
experience, such as when reading versus generating was manipulated across the two
study-test cycles or across learners.
In addition to finding that learners preferred to self-test over re-study as described
earlier, Kornell and Son (2009) found that across experience with multiple study-
test cycles, learners learned to self-test themselves more and did so at a faster rate
when there was feedback on the tests at the end of each cycle. Because self-testing
indeed produced higher performance, this study showed that learners' metacognitive
control became more effective with experience.
Kang (2009) also investigated whether learners would tend to self-test more with
experience. In this follow-up to the experiment described earlier, learners com-
pleted two study-test cycles. In the first cycle, following an initial presentation,
items were either represented, practiced via cued recall, or neither. Learners were
either given a cued recall test at a 2-day delay or given no test for this cycle. In
the second study-test cycle, following initial presentation, learners were allowed
to choose how to practice each item: representation, cued recall, or no practice.
Learners who had received the cued recall test following the first list chose the
recall practice option more frequently than did learners who did not receive that
test. Furthermore, Kang found that learners who had experienced a large advantage
for recalled over represented items on that test chose cued recall practice more fre-
quently in the second cycle, revealing that the experience at test of the downstream
benefits of self-testing practice was the central factor promoting later choice of that
strategy.
