The role of spontaneous recovery effects in the context of German orthography instruction methods with delayed correction.

Abstract

Extinction learning and recovery effects are known to be essential learning mechanisms. We investigated whether spontaneous recovery effects transfer to skill acquisition and play a role in the context of widely used but also criticized German orthography instruction methods that implement a prolonged phase of phonological spelling without correction. To test our hypothesis in a controlled manner, in the current experimental study, adult participants learned how to spell an artificial vocabulary with the help of a phonological spelling instruction method that emulates the criticized German orthography instruction methods. We compared participants (148 University students) who did not receive correction in the initial learning phase (delayed correction) with participants who received correction from the beginning (immediate correction). Although the incorrect spellings which were practiced in the initial learning phase (acquisition phase) were extinguished in the subsequent learning phase (extinction phase), the erroneous spellings recovered after a break of 24 hr in the delayed correction condition. The results indicate that learning with methods that emphasize phonological spelling, without correction in the initial learning phase, can lead to spontaneous recovery of initially learned incorrect spellings after the incorrect spellings have seemingly been extinguished. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).