Massed vs. Distributed Practice in Learning and Memory

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY 1
Massed vs. Distributed Practice in Learning and Memory
Student’s name
University affiliation
Author’s note

PSYCHOLOGY 2
Abstract
Students and instructors are faced with tough decisions of the appropriate time to study.
For many years, the timing of the study and how memory retention is affected has been explored
in human learning. The research gives an account of how performance on final exams upon
learning is improved when multiple sessions of study are separated, for instance, in time instead
massed in instant sequence (Studer et al., 2010). The article reviews findings of the types of
learning, which benefit from the spaced study, demonstrate the benefits on educational settings,
and recent research on the time intervals during which spaced study should occur to ensure
memory retention is fully maximized.
No mental ability is more essential than the capacity to learn. However, the benefits f
learning are mostly lost if whatever is least has been forgotten. In essence, such forgetting is
particular from knowledge, which is acquired from school. Much of this is applicable within the
day or the weeks after learning. As such, the learning strategy must be judged after a non-trivial
retention interval by how the student performs. By the experiment, which is provided, it
examined how students can retain a mathematics procedure and how it affected by various
variations in the temporal or total distribution of practice.
An assessment of the learning strategies of distributed practice and overlearning was
specifically done. A given amount of practice is divided into various sessions, whether the
practice is spaced or distributed (Haq & Kodak, 2015). For instance, once a student has learned
about solving mathematics procedures, the corresponding practice can be massed to an
assignment, or it can be distributed across other multiple assignments. As such, most
mathematics textbooks emphasize on massed learning (Bird, 2011). This is because most of the
problems relating to a given topic appear within the same practice setting. For an overlearning

PSYCHOLOGY 3
strategy, the student masters the skills first then continues to practice the skill. In mathematics,
overlearning is the most common practice, as assignments require students to solve numerous
problems with the same type but different logic. Strategies of distributed practice are only
comparable to massed practice by having a constant amount of practices (Rohrer, 2015). Finally,
a conclusion with recommendations on how spacing might be assimilated to the daily instruction
is given.
Massed practice and distributed practice.
Having knowledge across two or more sessions which are separated in time often
produces better learning as compared to having the same amount of time studying in a single
session. On the other hand, most distributed practice experiments are either massed into single
sessions or spread into two sessions separated by time, which is called the inter-session interval.
For instance, if one has ten math problems divided across two sessions but separated by the 1-
week interval, the intersession intervals would be one week (Suzuki & DeKeyser, 2017). Also,
the duration between the tests and the most recent learning sessions equals the RI. On that note,
in order to use spacing effectively, it is important to know how far apart the study sessions are
spaced. For example, if medical processions wish to maintain an excellent retention of
emergency skills response for more than a year, they will need to study the same information
repeatedly (Küpper-Tetzel, 2015).
Spacing has also benefited tasks, which relate to coordinated motor skills. For instance,
some students in the Microsurgical School practiced their skills in four sessions, which were
distributed in 4 weeks (Mitchell et al., 2011). As such, it shows that spacing and distributed work
along together. However, it requires one to be able to use spacing in order to be able to
incorporate distributed practice.

PSYCHOLOGY 4
Study overview and research questions
Based on the provided materials, the study compares between massed and distributed
practice on participant’s performance on ether a fill-in-blank or multiple-choice test. Therefore,
the study had two independent variables with two levels, study strategy (massed vs. distributed
practice) and type of test (fill-in-blank vs. multiple-choice test). For both strategy conditions,
participants spent the same amount of study time (Andersen et al., 2016). The difference came in
when they studied. For instance, half of the participant studied for six hours a day, while others
studied for two hours a day for three consecutive days.
The participants studied information from their research methods chapter and tested with
a 20-item test. All the participants were required to complete the test three weeks after their final
study session (Kwon et al., 2015). Essentially, the participants were assigned to massed practice
with a fill-in-the-blank test, massed practice with a multiple-choice test, distributed practice with
a fill-in-the-blank test, and distributed practice with a multiple-choice test (Andersen et al.,
2015). Mainly, the research question was how to study strategy influenced participants tests
performance and whether that varied by the type of test.
Variables
The study constituted of two independent variables. The first was a study strategy
(massed practice vs. distributed practice) and the second type encompassed the type of test (fill-
in-the-blank vs. multiple-choice). Mainly, the research is purposed on how study strategies affect
participants memory on a fill-in-the-blank test compared to a multiple-choice test. The dependent
variable, in this case, is their performance on the test.
Method
Participants