Compared to restudying, retrieval practice has often been found to enhance memory (the testing effect). However, it has been proposed that materials with high element interactivity may not benefit from retrieval practice. Transitive inference (TI) requires just such interactivity, in which information must be combined across multiple learning elements or premises. The current study employed a 7-element TI paradigm in which participants initially learned a set of premises (e.g., A > B, B > C, C > D, etc.), then engaged in either restudy or retrieval practice with the premises, and then were given a final test that assessed memory for the original premises and one's ability to make transitive inferences about them (e.g., to infer that B > D). Three experiments examined TI on final tests with retention intervals of a few minutes (Experiment 1), 2 days (Experiment 2), or up to a week (Experiment 3). Retrieval practice consistently failed to enhance transitive inference. Furthermore, retrieval practice significantly reduced TI in Experiment 1. Across experiments, TI was numerically worse in the retrieval-practice than restudy condition in 4 of 5 comparisons, and a small-scale meta-analysis revealed a significant negative effect of retrieval practice on TI.

中文翻译：

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检索练习对传递推理的影响。

与重新学习相比，经常发现检索练习可以增强记忆（测试效果）。然而，已经提出具有高元素相互作用的材料可能不能从检索实践中受益。传递推理（TI）仅需要这种交互性，其中信息必须跨多个学习元素或前提进行组合。当前的研究采用了7个元素的TI范式，其中参与者最初学习了一组前提（例如，A> B，B> C，C> D等），然后对这些前提进行重新研究或检索实践，然后进行最终测试，以评估对原始前提的记忆以及对它们进行传递推断的能力（例如，推断B> D）。三个实验在最终测试中检查了TI，其保留间隔为几分钟（实验1），2天（实验2）或长达一周（实验3）。检索练习始终未能增强传递推理。此外，在实验1中，检索实践显着减少了TI。在整个实验中，在5个比较中，有4个在比较实践中，TI在数学上比重学习条件差，并且小规模的荟萃分析显示，检索实践对TI产生了显着的负面影响。