Testing students on information that they do not know might seem like a fruitless endeavor. After all, why give anyone a test that they are guaranteed to fail because they have not yet learned the material? Remarkably, a growing body of research indicates that such testing--formally known as "prequestioning" or…

The current study examined whether the learning benefits of pretesting--like those produced by posttesting--generalize to classroom settings, and whether such benefits transfer to non-pretested related information. Before some lectures but not others, undergraduate students enrolled in a large research methods class were given a brief competitive…

Recent studies suggest that testing on prior material enhances subsequent learning of new material. Although such forward testing effect has received extensive empirical support, it is not yet clear how testing facilitates subsequent learning. One possible explanation suggests that interim testing informs learners about the format of an upcoming…