Research has suggested that long spacing (i.e., temporal intervals) within a training session facilitates second language vocabulary learning. Studies, however, have been limited to treatment that involved sessions for only initial learning but not subsequent relearning. Furthermore, most studies have investigated only the benefits of spacing without considering its potential costs (i.e., increased duration of the treatment). In our study, we examined the benefits and costs of within-session spacing for both initial learning and relearning. In this study, 170 Japanese-speaking university students learned 20 English–Japanese word pairs using one of the following four combinations of initial and relearning spacing: long–long, long–short, short–long, and short–short spacing. The results showed that introducing long spacing for both initial learning and relearning (long–long) led to better long-term retention and higher efficiency scores (i.e., number of words learned per trial) despite the increased duration of the treatment. These findings suggest that the benefits of long spacing outweigh its costs.

中文翻译：

---

第二语言词汇学习间隔的成本和好处：重新学习是否会超越间隔的积极和消极影响？

研究表明，训练课程中的长间隔（即时间间隔）有利于第二语言词汇的学习。然而，研究仅限于仅涉及初始学习而不涉及后续重新学习的治疗。此外，大多数研究仅调查了间隔的好处，而没有考虑其潜在成本（即增加治疗持续时间）。在我们的研究中，我们研究了初始学习和再学习的会话间隔的好处和成本。在这项研究中，170 名日语大学生使用以下四种初始和重新学​​习间距组合之一学习了 20 个英语-日语单词对：长-长、长-短、短-长和短-短间距。结果表明，尽管治疗持续时间增加，但在初始学习和再学习（长-长）中引入长间隔可以带来更好的长期保留和更高的效率分数（即每次试验学到的单词数量）。这些发现表明，长间距的好处大于其成本。