The Effect Of Content And Timing Of Feedback On Memory Retention

To provide feedback after test can improve learning. On the basis of pastresearchers’ theories and experiments, this study investigated how the content andtiming of feedback influence learning from a multiple-choice test.Experiment1, participants read3prose passages, which covered various generalknowledge topics and ranged between330and380words in length. The collegestudents as subjects, to investigate the influence about different feedback time(immediate feedback,20minutes delayed feedback) and feedback type (true or falsefeedback, the answer feedback and verification+answer feedback) within a day ofmemory effect. Results show that for the test content, no feedback and delayedfeedback have no significant difference. Immediate verification feedback kept a testresult better than the former two groups, but less than immediate answer feedback andimmediate verification+answer feedback. Delayed answer feedback and delayedverification+answer feedback kept the test result better than the immediate answerfeedback and immediate verification+answer feedback. For the materials retention,answer feedback and verification+answer feedback effect is superior to theverification feedback.But there was no significant difference between the former two.Experiment2extended the lag between the test and feedback. The collegestudents as subjects, to investigate the influence about feedback time (6hours delay,1day delay and2days delay) and feedback content (answer feedback and verification+answer feedback) in4days memory retention. Results show that for the test content,feedback delayed1day after the test produced the better performance than feedback6hours delayed and2days delayed. There was no significant difference between thelatter two. For the retention of the content of the material, feedback delayed6hoursafter the test produced the better performance than feedback1day delayed and2daysdelayed. There was no significant difference between the latter two.