Date of Award

Fall 12-2017

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department


Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type



In authentic educational settings, using formative quizzes or tests can improve students’ memory by direct strengthening of the memory trace. There are other indirect effects of testing, however, such as improved understanding of what one does and does not know. That is, quizzes can benefit students’ metacognitive awareness, which may in turn affect their restudy behaviors. We tested whether different types of feedback (correct/incorrect, correct answer, or minimal) differentially affected students’ metacognition, changed their restudy behaviors, and influenced final test performance. We found no effect of feedback type, but were able to better understand quizzing and restudy dynamics in an authentic educational scenario. For example, we show that even with minimal feedback, participants had insight into which concepts they answered incorrectly, because they later chose to restudy those concepts. Additionally, they were especially likely to restudy high-confidence errors, which were the most discrepant from expected performance. Finally, these behaviors appear to be adaptive, in that the items they chose to restudy were more likely to be answered correctly on the final test.


English (en)

Chair and Committee

Mark McDaniel

Committee Members

Julie Bugg, Kathleen McDermott


Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7W095B8