Downloaded By: [Washington University in St Louis] At: 15:45 3 July 2007 Testing improves long-term retention in a simulated classroom setting Andrew C. Butler and Henry L. Roediger, III Washington University in St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA The benefits of testing on long-term retention of lecture material were examined in a simulated classroom setting. Participants viewed a series of three lectures on consecutive days and engaged in a different type of postlecture activity on each day: studying a lecture summary, taking a multiple choice test, or taking a short answer test. Feedback (correct answers) was provided for half of the responses on the multiple choice and short answer tests. A final comprehensive short answer test was given 1 month later. Restudying or taking a multiple choice test soon after learning improved final recall relative to no activity, but taking an initial short answer test improved final recall the most. Feedback did not affect retention, probably due to the high level of performance on the initial tests. This finding is a powerful demonstration of how tests (especially recall tests) can improve retention of material after long retention intervals. In most educational settings, tests are employed as a means to evaluate student learning for the purpose of assigning grades. The heavy emphasis on assessment often obscures another function of testing that is highly relevant to the goals of education: the promotion of learning. Considerable research in cognitive psychology has demonstrated that testing improves retention of the material tested, a phenomenon called the testing effect (Carrier & Pashler, 1992; McDaniel & Masson, 1985; Wheeler & Roediger, 1992; see Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a, for a review).To be sure, the idea of using tests as a learning tool in the classroom is not new (Gates, 1917; Jones, 1923  1924; Spitzer, 1939), and many researchers have made a case for the benefit of frequent testing in education (Bangert-Drowns, Kulik, & Kulik, 1991; Foos & Fisher, 1988; Glover, 1989; Leeming, 2002; Paige, 1966). However, Correspondence should be addressed to Andrew C. Butler, Department of Psychology, Campus Box 1125, Washington University, 1 Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO 63139-4899, USA. E-mail: butler@wustl.edu We thank Aurora Steinle for her help in creating the experimental materials and collecting data. This research was supported by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (No. R305H030339). EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2007, 19 (4/5), 514  527 # 2007 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informabusiness http://www.psypress.com/ecp DOI: 10.1080/09541440701326097