Tanya Nair
Faculty Sponsor: Kristi S Multhaup; Greta Munger
Research indicates that retrieval practice is a better study strategy than repeated studying for foreign language learning. However, there is debate around which kind of stimuli is better for foreign language learning, pictures or native language translations of the foreign words. The current study addresses this debate with an experiment that manipulates study materials (word-word, picture-word) and study strategy (retrieval practice, repeated study). All participants (N = 99) were warned about not being overconfident to ensure they are attentive during the study phase. The results of this study were: 1) participants engaging in retrieval practice performed better than participants doing repeated study; 2) higher recall for words learned through picture-word pairs than through word-word pairs.