Taking a test of previously studied material has been shown to improve long-term subsequent test performance in a large variety of well controlled experiments with both human and nonhuman subjects. This phenomenon is called the testing effect. The promise that this benefit has for the field of education has biased research efforts to focus on applied instances of the testing effect relative to efforts to provide detailed accounts of the effect. Moreover, the phenomenon and its theoretical implications have gone largely unacknowledged in the basic associative learning literature, which historically and currently focuses primarily on the role of information processing at the time of acquisition while ignoring the role of processing at the time of testing. Learning is still widely considered to be something that happens during initial training, prior to testing, and tests are viewed as merely assessments of learning. However, the additional processing that occurs during testing has been shown to be relevant for future performance. The present review offers an introduction to the historical development, application, and modern issues regarding the role of testing as a learning opportunity (i.e., the testing effect). We conclude that the testing effect is seen to be sufficiently robust across tasks and parameters to serve as a compelling challenge for theories of learning to address. Our hope is that this review will inspire new research, particularly with nonhuman subjects, aimed at identifying the basic underlying mechanisms which are engaged during retrieval processes and will fuel new thinking about the learning-performance distinction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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测试可以提高绩效并评估学习：对测试效果的回顾及其对学习模型的影响。

在对人类和非人类受试者进行的各种良好控制的实验中，对先前研究的材料进行测试已被证明可以提高长期的后续测试性能。这种现象称为测试效应。这种好处对教育领域的承诺使得研究工作偏向于关注测试效果的应用实例，而不是提供效果的详细说明。此外，这种现象及其理论含义在基础联想学习文献中基本上没有得到承认，这些文献在历史上和目前主要关注信息处理在获取时的作用，而忽略了处理在测试时的作用。学习仍然被广泛认为是在测试之前的初始训练期间发生的事情，而测试仅被视为对学习的评估。然而，测试期间发生的额外处理已被证明与未来的性能相关。本综述介绍了测试作为学习机会的作用（即测试效果）的历史发展、应用和现代问题。我们的结论是，测试效果在任务和参数上都足够稳健，可以作为学习理论解决的一个引人注目的挑战。我们希望这篇综述能够激发新的研究，特别是针对非人类受试者的研究，旨在确定检索过程中所涉及的基本机制，并将激发关于学习表现区别的新思维。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。