While there is clear evidence for the benefits of using retrieval practice as a learning strategy (1), we also know that students may not necessarily chose to use retrieval practice when studying on their own (2). A very recent experiment (3) investigated study choices in university students who were tasked with learning English-Swahili word pairs under different instructions and context conditions.
Participants were either instructed about retrieval practice and how it is better than restudying repeatedly (instruction group) or they received no specific instruction (control group). Additionally, they created two context conditions: In one condition, participants completed the experiment in the laboratory setting whilst being supervised (supervised condition). In the other condition, participants completed the experiment on their own without supervision (unsupervised condition).
The researchers also manipulated the task difficulty, but since this manipulation made no difference, I only mention it here for the sake of completeness, but it will not be further discussed.
