![]() ![]() The results from experiments on distributed practice have informed memory theory principally insofar as those theories successfully handle the difference between massed and spaced practice conditions (the spacing effect Ebbinghaus, 1885) or between differentially spaced conditions (the lag effect Melton, 1967), as well as how they account for differences arising from intentionality of learning during study or from different memory tests ( Challis, 1993 Greene, 1989 Russo, Parkin, Taylor, & Wilks, 1998). Almost every major textbook on cognitive psychology and on human memory discusses the advantages of distributed learning, and such effects are among the keystone results that contending theoretical models of learning and memory must dutifully explain. The effects of distributing practice are extremely robust and cross-cutting-the advantages are evident in basic memory tasks using words ( Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006 Janiszewski, Noel, & Sawyer, 2003) and pictures ( Hintzman & Rogers, 1973), in motor skill acquisition ( Lee & Genovese, 1988), and with more complex educationally relevant materials ( Krug, Davis, & Glover, 1990). ![]() This interest owes in part to the ramifications such results have for developing effective training, educational, and athletic regimens, and to the impressive success researchers have had in importing interventions out of the laboratory and into training settings, the classroom, and the practice field. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the advantages provided to memory by the distribution of multiple practice or study events. The reminding model accounts for many basic results in the literature on distributed practice, readily handles data that are problematic for encoding variability theories, including superadditivity and nonmonotonicity, and provides a unified theoretical framework for understanding the effects of repetition and the effects of associative relationships on memory. The bottleneck in such theories lies in the assumption that mnemonic benefits arise from the increasing independence, rather than interdependence, of study opportunities. Encoding variability theory encounters serious challenges in two important phenomena that we review here: superadditivity and nonmonotonicity. In this paper, we critically review the class of theories that presume contextual or encoding variability as the sole basis for the advantages of distributed practice, and recommend an alternative approach based on the idea that some study events remind learners of other study events. The advantages provided to memory by the distribution of multiple practice or study opportunities are among the most powerful effects in memory research. ![]()
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