The Effects of Prequestions versus Postquestions on Memory Retention in Children

Abstract

Prior research revealed that answering questions after study benefits learning in children, but it is unclear whether answering questions before study (i.e., prequestions) produces similar effects. Here, we report two experiments investigating this issue in 4th and 5th grade children. In both experiments, target-words from an encyclopedic text were either prequestioned, postquestioned, or reread. To assess memory retention, cued recall and multiple choice tests were administered after a 7-day interval, when children also rated their confidence on their responses. Both prequestions and postquestions resulted in overall greater memory retention than rereading, although postquestions resulted in greater cued recall performance than prequestions, a finding that was mirrored by the confidence data (i.e., postquestion > prequestion > reread). Thus, although both prequestions and postquestions were more beneficial for memory retention than rereading, postquestions seem to have promoted more recollection-based retrieval than prequestions, a finding we discuss from a dual-process model perspective.