Retrieval prompts

Claim: a document meant to be learned ends each part with a few questions the reader answers from memory, with the answers folded, and is reread after a gap.

• Grade: measured for questions answered from memory and for spaced rereading; folding the answers supported with caveat, inferred from the testing effect and not tested as a layout.
• Evidence: learning science (strands 1 and 2).
• Check: shape-conformance (exact, for documents declared as notes in config): the questions are present; whether they test recall is judgment.
• Reader styles: none override it; it does not apply to pure reference material.

What it asks

• Two or three questions per part, answerable without the text; answers hidden until asked for.
• A question placed before a part only for what must be learned: prequestions help the questioned material and nothing else.
• Spaced rereading: the gap grows with how long the material must last.

Why

Practice testing beats restudy, g = 0.33, and g = 0.50 against all control conditions, over 222 classroom studies (Yang 2021); it helps more with feedback (Rowland 2014). Spaced retrieval beats massed, g = 0.74 (Latimier 2021). Prequestions give g = 0.54 on the questioned material and 0.04 on the rest (St. Hilaire 2023).

Limits

Restudy wins at five minutes; testing wins at two days and a week (Roediger 2006). The answers are folded because an answer in sight turns the question into restudy, the condition testing beats; no study compared a folded answer with one printed below the question. Whether the gaps expand or stay equal makes no measurable difference, g = 0.03 (Latimier 2021).