This study explored smartwatches’ potential for implementing and automatizing the use of retrieval as a study tool outside of classroom contexts. Across five experiments, review prompts delivered via a smartwatch after reading scientific passages enhanced retention of factual information from the passages and reduced forgetting after a two-day delay. The delivery format—delivery in the form of testing versus in the form of restudying— mattered to the level of learning benefit shown. Consistent with the testing effect, delivering the information as a test question followed a minute later by its answer was generally more beneficial than delivering it as a mere factual statement for restudy. Whether participants were reading magazines, watching Netflix episodes, or engaging with their own smartphones while receiving the smartwatch prompts made no difference to the beneficial effect of the smartwatch prompting on retention. Thus, smartwatch prompts can be applied strategically to automatize outside-of-the-classroom learning reinforcement.

本研究探讨了智能手表在实现和自动化使用检索作为课堂环境之外的学习工具方面的潜力。在五个实验中，阅读科学文章后通过智能手表提供的复习提示增强了对文章中事实信息的保留，并减少了两天延迟后的遗忘。交付形式——以测试形式交付与以再学习形式交付——对所显示的学习收益水平很重要。与测试效果一致，将信息作为测试问题提供，在一分钟后给出答案通常比将其作为再研究的仅仅事实陈述提供更有益。参与者是否正在阅读杂志、观看 Netflix 剧集、或在接收智能手表提示的同时使用自己的智能手机对智能手表提示对留存率的有益效果没有影响。因此，可以战略性地应用智能手表提示来自动化课堂外的学习强化。