A fundamental property of human memory is that repetition enhances memory. Peterson and Mulligan (2012) recently documented a surprising "negative repetition effect," in which participants who studied a list of cue-target pairs twice recalled fewer targets than a group who studied the pairs only once. Words within a pair rhymed, and…

Despite the clear long-term benefits of spaced practice, students and teachers often choose massed practice. Whether learners actually fail to appreciate the benefits of spacing is, however, open to question. Early studies (e.g., Zechmeister & Shaughnessy, 1980) found that participants' judgments of learning were higher after massed than after…

Three paired-associate learning studies were designed to test the hypothesis that individual differences in learning speed are determined by the types of elaborative strategies used by learners during acquisition. Slow learners generate fewer elaborators and produce less effective elaborators, even when using the same strategy as fast learners.…