Acquisition and Retention of Esperanto: The Case for Error Correction and Immediate Feedback

Abstract

Participants completed 5 laboratory examinations during which the number of responses permitted (1 response, up to 4 responses) and the timing of feedback (no feedback control: Scantron form; delayed feedback: end-of-test, 24-hr delay; immediate feedback: assistant, response form) were manipulated. Participants completed a 100-item cumulative final examination which included 10 items from each laboratory examination, plus 50 entirely new items; this cumulative examination was presented again 3 and 6 months later to determine if the timing of feedback affected retention. Timing of feedback and opportunity to engage in iterative responding (IR) interacted significantly to enhance the cumulative final examination performance of participants provided with immediate feedback, with comparable performance demonstrated when immediate feedback was provided by either an experimental assistant or the Immediate Feedback Assessment Technique (IF AT) form. Together with prior reports from our laboratory, these results highlight the robustness of immediate feedback and IR to facilitate learning in a manner that is comparable between laboratory and classroom settings, although the size of the immediate feedback effect observed in the laboratory is less robust than that observed in the classroom.