Restudying With the Quiz in Hand: When Correct-Answer Feedback is No Better Than Minimal Feedback

Quizzing (testing) can enhance students’ metacognitive accuracy, restudy behaviors, and final test performance. Researchers have not examined, however, the effect of quiz feedback and the availability of the quiz during restudy on these indirect effects of quizzing. We examined three types of quiz feedback: correct-answer, right/wrong, and minimal. In Experiment 1, when the quiz and feedback were available during restudy, participants in all three conditions followed a discrepancy reduction study policy. There were no differences in final test performance in Experiment 1, implying that the degree of feedback elaboration did not impact learners’ benefit from quizzing and restudy. In Experiment 2, when we retracted access to the quiz and feedback during restudy, restudy was impaired, and the minimal condition performed worse on the final test than the correct-answer condition. It appears that correct-answer feedback is critical if quizzes are unavailable; if they are available, the type of feedback has much less impact.