Practice Testing Facilitates Forward Navigation but Undermines Backward Navigation During Map Learning

TL;DR

Practice testing helps people remember routes forward but can make it harder to navigate them backward.

Contribution

The study reveals that retrieval practice improves forward navigation but impairs backward navigation, with a solution to mitigate the negative effect.

Findings

Practice testing enhances forward navigation and memory for peripheral route details.

Practice testing impairs backward navigation compared to restudying.

Visualizing cursor tracing during retrieval eliminates the negative effect on backward navigation.

Abstract

Practice testing (i.e., retrieval practice) has been established as a powerful learning strategy by comparison with many others, such as restudying. The current study explores whether practice testing can boost learning of map routes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that, by comparison with restudying, testing enhanced forward navigation and facilitated memory for peripheral information along the route. Experiment 2 examined the testing effect on backward navigation by asking participants to navigate from the endpoint to the start point in the final recall test. The results showed a negative testing effect: testing produced poorer backward navigation performance by comparison with restudying. Experiment 3 demonstrated that showing participants the tracing of the cursor during the retrieval practice phase eliminated the negative testing effect on backward navigation. Overall, the documented findings suggest that retrieval practice can facilitate forward navigation but impair backward navigation when the navigation task requires reorganization and mental rotation of the learned routes.

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