Abstract
According to the concept of desirable difficulties, introducing difficulties in learning may sacrifice short-term performance in order to benefit long-term retention of learning. We describe three types of desirable difficulty effects: testing, generation, and varied conditions of practice. The empirical literature indicates that desirable difficulty effects are not always obtained and we suggest that cognitive load theory may be used to explain many of these contradictory results. Many failures to obtain desirable difficulty effects may occur under conditions where working memory is already stressed due to the use of high element interactivity information. Under such conditions, the introduction of additional difficulties may be undesirable rather than desirable. Empirical evidence from diverse experiments is used to support this hypothesis.
Highlights
There is considerable data available indicating that introducing difficulties during instruction may slow down the acquisition rate of learning, but facilitate long-term retention and transfer (Bjork and Linn, 2006; Roediger and Karpicke, 2006; Rohrer and Taylor, 2007; Soderstrom and Bjork, 2015)
Evidence collected far from studies based on cognitive load theory indicates that two desirable difficulties, the testing and the generation effects, are effective for low but ineffective for high element interactivity information
Some conflicting findings associated with desirable difficulties research possibly may be resolved by the concept of element interactivity within the framework of cognitive load theory
Summary
There is considerable data available indicating that introducing difficulties during instruction may slow down the acquisition rate of learning, but facilitate long-term retention and transfer (Bjork and Linn, 2006; Roediger and Karpicke, 2006; Rohrer and Taylor, 2007; Soderstrom and Bjork, 2015). The framework of desirable difficulties is based on the assumption that including some difficulties in students’ learning may lead to long-term retention and transfer of knowledge (Bjork, 1994) Such difficulties may include: testing – including retrieval practice of taught materials compared to re-visiting them; generation – self-generating answers compared to studying presented answers; Undesirable Difficulties in High-Element Interactivity Materials and varied conditions of practice – learning in multiple environments compared to a single environment. Several studies (van Gog and Kester, 2012; Leahy et al, 2015; van Gog et al, 2015; Hanham et al, 2017) using cognitive load theory compared a worked example only condition (study-study) to a worked example-problem solving condition (study-testing), but over many experiments obtained a mix of results favoring testing, reverse testing where additional studying was superior to testing, or no difference between conditions. The results indicated that adding variability to the format of questions was effective in combination with worked examples, but ineffective in combination with conventional problem solving
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