The testing effect—the power of retrieval practice to enhance long-term knowledge retention more than restudying does—is a well-known phenomenon in learning. However, retrieval practice is hardly appreciated by students and underutilized when studying. One of the reasons is that learners usually do not experience immediate benefits of such practice which often present only after a delay. We therefore conducted 2 experiments to examine whether students choose retrieval practice more often as their learning strategy after having experienced its benefits. In Experiment 1, students received individual feedback about the extent to which their 7-day delayed test scores after retrieval practice differed from their test scores after restudy. Those students who had actually experienced the benefits of retrieval practice appreciated the strategy more and used it more often after receiving feedback. In Experiment 2, we compared the short-term and long-term effects on retrieval practice use of individual performance feedback and general instruction about the testing effect. Although both interventions enhanced its use in the short term, only the individual feedback led to enhanced use in the long term by those who had actually experienced its benefits, demonstrating the superiority of the individual feedback in terms of its ability to promote retrieval practice use.

测试效果（检索练习比重新学习可以增强长期知识保留的强大功能）是学习中的一种众所周知的现象。但是，检索实践几乎不受学生的欢迎，并且在学习时没有得到充分利用。原因之一是，学习者通常不会从这种实践中获得直接的收益，而这种收益往往只是在延迟之后才显现出来。因此，我们进行了2个实验，以检验学生在体验了检索实践的好处后是否更频繁地选择检索实践作为他们的学习策略。在实验1中，学生收到有关其在检索练习后7天的延迟考试成绩与重新学习后的考试成绩差异程度的个人反馈。那些实际体验过检索实践好处的学生在收到反馈后更加欣赏该策略，并更频繁地使用它。在实验2中，我们比较了个人表现反馈和有关测试效果的一般说明对检索实践的短期和长期影响。尽管两种干预措施都在短期内提高了使用率，但只有个人反馈导致实际受益的人从长远来看增加了使用率，这表明了个人反馈在促进检索实践使用方面的优越性。