Is Intensive Learning Effective? Reflecting on the Results from Cognitive Psychology and the Second Language Acquisition Literature

Raquel Serrano

The Spacing Effect in the Cognitive Psychology Literature

Introduction

The main objective of this chapter is to consider the effect of time distribution of instructional hours on second language learning. In order to understand this effect better it is crucial to know how time distribution affects learning in general. That is why a brief review of some of the most relevant articles in the cognitive psychology literature will be presented. Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that spacing the time devoted to learning is more beneficial than concentrating it in short periods of time. This phenomenon is known as the spacing effect. In contrast, in the second language acquisition literature, intensive (or concentrated) courses have been shown to be highly effective for students' language development. This chapter shows that the apparently contradictory results can be explained if we consider the characteristics of the experiments in cognitive psychology discussed in this section. Additionally, some accounts of the spacing effect (especially the 'study-phase retrieval'), or the fact that the spacing effect often disappears at short retention intervals (see below), can easily explain the findings from the second language acquisition literature.

In the cognitive psychology literature it has been demonstrated that repeated practice strengthens the memory representation of an item or structure (Pavlik & Anderson, 2005). Similarly, a large amount of empirical evidence suggests that an item is better recalled and learned when it is repeated in spaced sequences (with other intervening items or long time lapses between the repetitions) than in massed presentations, in which repetitions appear subsequently or within short time lapses. This phenomenon is well known in the literature as the spacing effect. As explained in the following paragraphs, the spacing effect has been found mostly in verbal learning (involving words in the participants' first language, non-words and foreign language words), but experiments have also been conducted that examine the effect of time distribution on learning to solve mathematical problems, recognizing faces or identifying advertisements.

Spacing effect in verbal learning

Verbal learning tasks are probably the most common tasks used in studies investigating the spacing effect (Delaney & Knowles, 2005; Dempster, 1988; Elmes et al., 1983; Greene, 1989; Ross & Landauer, 1978; Seabrook et al., 2005; Toppino et al., 2002). Participants see lists of words on a computer screen that they have to recall (either in cued-memory tasks, for which retrieval cues are provided, or in free recall tasks) in one or several tests at different time intervals. For example, Greene (1989) included a list of 96 common words, the repetitions of which appeared separated by 0, 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 intervening words. The spacing effect was significant in both free- and cued-recall tasks.

Toppino et al. (2002) examined recall of items that belonged to three different sets: words that were presented once; words that were repeated three times in massed repetitions (one presentation after the other); and words that were repeated in spaced sequences (separated by three or four intervening words). As in the previous case, spaced items were recalled significantly more accurately than massed items. Significant differences were also obtained between items presented once and repeated items in favor of the latter.

Spacing effect in foreign language vocabulary learning

Experiments analyzing foreign language vocabulary learning (Bahrick, 1979; Bahrick & Phelps, 1987; Bloom & Shuell, 1981; Pavlik & Anderson, 2005; Rohrer & Pashler, 2007) tend to suggest that spacing training sessions is beneficial for long-term retention, even though immediate recall tends to be comparable for spaced and massed items. Bloom and Shuell (1981) performed a classroom experiment including 28 high-school students who received distributed foreign vocabulary practice (one 1 minute unit a day on three successive days) and 28 who received massed practice (three 10 minute units on one day). An immediate test demonstrated that the performance of the two groups was identical; however, a delayed post-test four days later showed that the distributed practice led to significantly better retention.

Pavlik and Anderson (2005) included 104 Japanese–English pairs that were presented to a group of 40 participants, who were then tested with 2, 14 or 98 intervening presentations in one session. Retention was then examined after one day (N = 20) or seven days (N = 20). The results show that, in the first session, the greater the spacing between presentation and trial, the worse participants' performance was. Nevertheless, in session 2 (after seven days), wider spacing resulted in less forgetting (as reflected in the performance in the initial trial in session 2 as compared with the final trial in session 1). Regarding the two retention intervals considered, participants forgot less at the one-day retention interval than at the seven-day interval.

Bahrick and Hall (2005) analyzed the learning of 40 Swahili–English word-pairs by 41 undergraduate students who followed four training sessions under different schedules: massed (all sessions in one day); one-day between-session interval; and 14-day between-session interval. The participants were...