The Interim Test Effect: Testing Prior Material Can Facilitate the Learning of New Material
This article reports on five experiments that were conducted to examine the effect on interim testing of prior textual material on learning of subsequent textual learning, which the authors term an interim-test effect. Participants were prompted to recall each section of an expository text before moving on to study the next section, or were only prompted to recall after the final section. In all experiments, recall of the final, target section was greater when prior sections had received interim tests versus no interim tests.