Effects of Massed and Distributed Practice on the Learning and Retention of Second-Language Vocabulary

“Studies by Bloom and Shuell (1981) and Dempster (1987) on L2 vocabulary learning have shown, not surprisingly, that if some 40 vocabulary items (consisting of a L2 word form and a L1 translation) had to be learned in a single learning session, massed presentation or practice (e.g. the presentation…”

“However, on a long-term retention test administered 7 days later, participants who had spaced their study recalled more pairs than participants who had massed their study (Bloom & Shuell, 1981).”

“Given that the intended outcome of such decisions is to promote durable learning, understanding how the scheduling of study influences memory retention is critically important.”

“Test performance is generally superior after practice that is spaced rather than massed— a finding known as the spacing effect (e.g., Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahrick, 1993; Bjork, 1979, 1988, 1994; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Carpenter & DeLosh, 2005; Reynolds & Glaser, 1964; Smith & Rothkopf, 1984).”

“Based on research about the benefits of distributed learning (e.g., Bloom & Shuell, 1981) and distributed WM training (Penner et al., 2012), we expected that the training interval is a moderator of transfer effects following WM training.”

“For example, in a study reported by Bloom and Shuell (1981), high school students learned 20 French–English vocabulary words.”

“…& Radosevich, 1999; Rohrer, 2009; for experimental papers, see, for example, Bahrick, H. P., Bahrick, L. E., Bahrick, A. S., & Bahrick, P. E., 1993; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Cepeda, Vul, Rohrer, Wixted, & Pashler, 2008; Cook, 1934; Kornell & Bjork, 2008; Lee & Genovese, 1988; Mumford et al., 1994;…”

“It can be noted that this study took advantage of the interval rules based on the space effect theory (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Nation, 2001), which may have exerted the largest influence on the L2 target word acquisition.”

“Consequently, many authors have urged a greater reliance on distributed practise (Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahrick, 1993; Bjork, 1979, 1988; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Dempster, 1989; Reynolds & Glaser, 1964; Schmidt & Bjork, 1992).”

“The effects of spacing and lag are well-established in second language acquisition research (Atkinson, 1972; Bloom and Shuell, 1981; Cepeda et al., 2006; Pavlik Jr and Anderson, 2008), and benefits have also been shown for gym-nastics, baseball pitching, video games, and many other skills.”

“…), t ) is defined as the minimum of the expected value of the cost of going from state ( m ( t ), n ( t )) at time t to the final state at time t f : [5] Now Then, to derive the HJB equation, we differentiate J with respect to time t , m ( t ) , and n ( t ) using SI Appendix , section 2, Lemma 1 :…”

“Numerous studies have demonstrated spacing benefits for long-term retention of verbal information, including vocabulary learning (e.g. Bloom & Shuell, 1981), memorizing facts (e.g. DeRemer & D’Agostino, 1974) and word list learning (e.g. Zechmeister & Shaughnessy, 1980).”

“, 2014), on tests delayed by 4 days in high-school students (Bloom and Shuell, 1981), and on tests delayed by 7 days in college students (Nakata, 2015).”

“A small but clear demonstration is that of Bloom & Shuell (1981) who investigated high school students’ learning of French vocabulary which was presented either as massed practice (one 30 minute period) or distributed practice (three 10 minute periods over three successive days).”

“This means that, in that period, the forgetting curve ‘‘falls’’ by 10% (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Dempster, 1987).”

“In fact, some authors measure long-term vocabulary retention several days (Bloom & Shuell, 2014), 2 weeks (Wu, 2014), 3 weeks (Groot, 2000), a month (Ellis, Tanaka & Yamazaki, 1994) and even 3 months (Elley, 1989) after the period of practice.”

“We should see distributed practice benefits, at least at long RIs, where the ISI is between 10% and 30% of the RI.”

“Research in memory (Baddeley, 1990) and L2 vocabulary learning (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Dempster, 1987) has found that spaced repetition (i.e., the spreading out or 'spacing' of repetitions of a word throughout a text) is more conducive to the learning of vocabulary than repetition that is massed…”

“Many of the excluded studies were informative but were designed to answer questions other than the one examined here (e.g., Bahrick and Phelps 1987; Bloom and Shuell 1981; Gay 1973; Reynolds and Glaser 1964; Seabrook, Brown, and Solity 2005; Smith and Rothkopf 1984).”

“…repeated retrieval to increase learning, the distributed practice effect (e.g., Bahrick & Phelps, 1987; Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahrick, 1993; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Cepeda et al., 2009), retrieval effort hypothesis (Pyc & Rawson, 2009), and desirable difficulty framework (e.g., Bjork, 1994)…”

“…of spaced-repetition testing for long-term retention of L2 vocabulary has been established through experimental research (Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick & Bahrick, 1993; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Ellis, 1995), yet these powerful experimental demonstrations have not resulted in classroom implementations.”

“Experimental studies have focused mostly on vocabulary learning, i.e. memorization of paired associates (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011; Nakata, 2015; Pavlik & Anderson, 2005; Rohrer & Pashler, 2007; Schuetze, 2015), and results demonstrated that distributed learning led to a…”

“For example, Bloom and Shuell (1981) compared a spaced group that studied French words on 3 consecutive days to a massed group that studied French words all in the same day.”

“The overall picture is similar for all of these specifications.4 Spreading out course material typically leads to greater retention of knowledge than more intensive instruction, so we expect δ0 to be positive (Bloom and Shuell, 1981).”

“…whether larger temporal lag between repetitions results in improved recall has demonstrated an overall memory benefit with longer spacing intervals (Bloom and Shuell, 1981; Carpenter and DeLosh, 2005; Logan and Balota, 2008; Rickard et al., 2008; Karpicke and Roediger, 2009; Karpicke and…”

“Concerning the pattern of performance in the new-cue conditions, we replicated the key outcomes of Carpenter (2011), and the numerical trends were consistent with a greater degree of elaborative retrieval with long-lag than with short-lag retrieval practice.”

“Email: kellyjb@email.arizona.edu”

“…items, the benefits of spacing are sometimes not seen when the test takes place shortly after learning but are seen at longer retention intervals between study and test (e.g., Peterson et al., 1962a,b; Glenberg and Lehmann, 1980; Bloom and Shuell, 1981; Krug et al., 1990; Rohrer and Taylor, 2006).”

“…Spacing Condition × Retention Interval interaction that has been observed across numerous paradigms using different types of stimuli (e.g. Bahrick, Bahrick, Bahrick, & Bahrick, 1993; Balota et al., 1989; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Peterson et al., 1963; Rawson & Kintsch, 2005; Spieler & Balota, 1996).”

“This delayed effect may suggest an underlying mechanism of learning and retention—instructional effects might be delayed because they boost long-term memory more than initial learning (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Cao et al., 2013b).”

“From an educational perspective, these findings have been crucial in developing optimal learning strategies for students (Bloom and Shuell, 1981).”

“However, second language acquisition (SLA) research has thus far focused only on whether or not spacing is beneficial for the acquisition of various aspects of an L2, such as syntax (Bird, 2010; Rogers, 2015) and vocabulary (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Nakata, 2015; Nakata & Webb, 2016; Schuetze, 2015).”

“Third, a number of classroom studies have shown that spacing can be successfully employed in (foreign) vocabulary learning in undergraduate students (e.g., Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Kornell, 2009).”

“In the spacing effect literature, massed study often leads to similar or higher levels of final test performance than distributed study with short retention intervals (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Cull, 2000; Toppino & Gracen, 1985).”

“Bloom and Shuell (1981) studied vocabulary learning in high school students memorizing English–French vocabulary as part of their regular classwork.”

“11 The distributed approach has been argued by some to benefit students by increasing the amount of information they retain and understand (Bloom and Shuell, 1981; Rea and Modigliani, 1985). or small groups (Agodini et al., 2009; WWC, 2009).12 MacMillan/McGraw Hill uses a massed approach to…”

“This draws inspiration from traditional education curriculum practices, such as distributed spacing of vocabulary (Bloom and Shuell, 1981) and mixed review in mathematics (Rohrer, 2009).”

“These studies have demonstrated the positive effects of spacing in learning of words (e.g. Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Gerbier, Toppino, & Koenig, 2014; Goossens, Camp, Verkoeijen, Tabbers, & Zwaan, 2012; Kornell, 2009; Küpper-Tetzel, Erdfelder, & Dickhäuser, 2014; Nakata, 2015; Nakata & Webb, 2015;…”

“In contrast, spaced practice negatively affects short-term performance, but significantly improves long-term learning [6, 10, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26].”

“For instance, several studies have demonstrated the existence of spacing effect when words were used as stimuli (e.g., Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Carpenter, Pashler, & Cepeda, 2009; Goossens, Camp, Verkoeijen, Tabbers, & Zwaan, 2012; Kornell, 2009; Sobel, Cepeda, & Kapler, 2011).”

“Properly scheduled repetitions and reconsolidations of previous knowledge have proven effective for a wide variety of real-world learning tasks, including piano [30], surgery [39, 33], video games [29], and vocabulary learning [4], among others.”

“For example, distributed practice has been shown to improve memory for educationally relevant material (Benjamin & Tullis, 2010; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Seabrook, Brown, & Solity, 2005).”

“In a classroom setting, Bloom and Shuell (1981 ) had high school students study French-English vocabulary pairs for 30 min., either in one session or in 10-min. sessions across three days.”

“Research on distributed practice, or spacing effects, indicates that the review of information at different timings has a positive effect on learning (e.g. Bahrick, 1979; Ebbinghaus, 1985/1913) and FL vocabulary learning (e.g. Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Nakata & Suzuki, 2019).”

“The effect has been demonstrated in L2 learning, mostly using vocabulary (e.g., Bahrick & Hall, 2005; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Koval, 2019; Nakata, © The Author(s), 2022.”

“…2011; Qian & Aslin, 2014), discriminate (Lipsitt, 1961; Samuels, 1969; Sandhofer & Doumas, 2008; Zotov, Jones, & Mewhort, 2011), and learn (Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Elio & Anderson, 1984; Helsdingen, van Gog, & Van Merriënboer, 2011; Li, Cohen, & Koedinger, 2013; Mack & Palmeri, 2015;…”