Hi Jonathan. Thank you for your always insightful posts. If I may ask a silly question: what is the key distinguishable difference between the spacing effect and retrieval pracitce, if spacing can be defined as "delayed practice"?
The two things can be combined, and often are, but to an extent they can be separated.
Spacing is practising after a delay, but it does not always involve retrieval. If you read a passage again after one week, that's spaced practice, but not active retrieval from memory.
Retrieval always involves some kind of time delay, but this could be very brief. Students in a single lesson could be asked to retrieve after a few minutes. I think usually, people are talking about longer delays when recommending spacing in education, and generally more than one practice session too.
So, in short, retrieval is about having to actively recall the information, and spacing is about the time delay, but they can both happen together. Hope that helps. And thanks for reading :)
Interesting post. I just published an article on The Great Forgetting, discussing the outsourcing of memory to tech. I practice different memorization techniques with my homeschool co-op students who enjoy the challenge.
Hi Jonathan. Thank you for your always insightful posts. If I may ask a silly question: what is the key distinguishable difference between the spacing effect and retrieval pracitce, if spacing can be defined as "delayed practice"?
Great question!
The two things can be combined, and often are, but to an extent they can be separated.
Spacing is practising after a delay, but it does not always involve retrieval. If you read a passage again after one week, that's spaced practice, but not active retrieval from memory.
Retrieval always involves some kind of time delay, but this could be very brief. Students in a single lesson could be asked to retrieve after a few minutes. I think usually, people are talking about longer delays when recommending spacing in education, and generally more than one practice session too.
So, in short, retrieval is about having to actively recall the information, and spacing is about the time delay, but they can both happen together. Hope that helps. And thanks for reading :)
Super helpful. Thank you for clarifying.
Interesting post. I just published an article on The Great Forgetting, discussing the outsourcing of memory to tech. I practice different memorization techniques with my homeschool co-op students who enjoy the challenge.