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Abstract Retrieval practice tends to produce better long-term learning than rereading, but laboratory studies have typically used arbitrary material that subjects may not care to learn. The observed advantage of retrieval practice may be exaggerated because low motivation may result in deficient processing during (usually passive) rereading. Thus, when subjects are motivated to learn the material, the type of study strategy (whether retrieval practice or rereading) might be less important. To test this hypothesis, we conducted 3 experiments in which we manipulated the incentives (using monetary bonuses or time savings) for learning Swahili–English word pairs. Items that had undergone retrieval practice were better recalled than reread items on a final test 2 days later, but this effect did not interact with incentive level. These results provide some reassurance that lab findings from the testing effects literature likely generalize to real-world situations in which motivation to learn may be greater.

1. Introduction Laboratory research on human memory has long shown that a memory test is not a neutral event that merely measures the contents of memory (e.g., Abbott, 1909, Lachman and Laughery, 1968 and Tulving, 1967). On the contrary, taking a test typically enhances long-term learning and retention more than rereading of the target information (e.g., Carrier and Pashler, 1992, McDaniel et al., 2012 and Rohrer et al., 2010), and processes involved in memory retrieval have been implicated (e.g., Carpenter, 2009, Kang et al., 2007 and Karpicke and Zaromb, 2010). This testing effect is often referred to in the research literature as the benefit of retrieval practice (for recent reviews, see Carpenter, 2012 and Rawson and Dunlosky, 2012). Given that retrieval practice would appear to be a useful instructional tool, in recent years there have been calls for greater application of retrieval practice in the classroom (e.g., Dempster, 1992, Karpicke and Grimaldi, 2012 and Roediger et al., 2010). Literally hundreds of experiments have found retrieval practice beneficial for learning—across a wide range of study materials and diverse student populations. It is worth noting, however, that the overwhelming majority of these studies were conducted in the lab, and one can reasonably wonder whether lab findings will generalize to real-world classrooms (e.g., Efklides, 2012 and Lundeberg and Fox, 1991). One difference is that in lab studies, the material is usually arbitrary from the subject's point of view, i.e., it is assigned by the experimenter with little regard for the subject's actual interests or goals (e.g., Swahili foreign vocabulary). By contrast, when students study in real life it is typically in pursuit of some larger goal, perhaps to master some content area that is of interest to the student or to do well on an upcoming exam. Thus, it seems likely that the motivation to learn the material for a typical subject in a lab experiment is substantially lower than for students in most real-world situations. 1.1. Motivation and learning Motivation refers to the condition that initiates and/or maintains a person's goal-directed behavior. It is generally assumed that there are powerful links between motivation, learning, and academic achievement (e.g., Deci et al., 1991, Dweck, 1986 and Lepper et al., 1973). Motivation is generally thought to facilitate learning through several means, such as increasing the attention the individual pays to the materials (as compared to competing stimuli in the environment) and by promoting the adoption of effortful encoding strategies. How does motivation bear on the enhancement of learning through retrieval practice? It is conceivable that a relatively passive study strategy like rereading (the usual control against which retrieval practice is compared) might be particularly vulnerable to lapses in attention (see Szpunar, Khan, & Schacter, 2013). Researchers in the past have raised concerns about reading control conditions being susceptible to subjects’ failing to attend to the materials for the entire presentation duration. For instance, Pressley, Symons, McDaniel, Snyder, and Turnure (1988) when assessing the benefits of elaborative interrogation for learning decided to use a more conservative control condition than in past studies: subjects had to read the information (sentences) aloud repeatedly for the entire time that it was presented. They found that the more active reading condition led to better learning compared to the relatively passive reading control used in a previous study (Pressley, McDaniel, Turnure, Wood, & Ahmad, 1987). Other studies have had reading controls that required subjects to copy by hand (i.e., write out) the target information (e.g., deWinstanley & Bjork, 2004), in an effort to ensure that the information would be properly attended to. Moreover, research on learning from prose (via reading) has shown that motivation interacts with text readability: comprehension of hard-to-read texts is generally poorer than easy texts, but this difference is smaller or eliminated in motivated subjects (Fass and Schumacher, 1978 and Klare, 1976). The vast majority of prior studies on retrieval practice have compared retrieval practice against passive rereading, a control condition that might suffer disproportionately when motivation is weak (for the reasons mentioned above). Part of the observed advantage of retrieval practice over rereading in lab studies might therefore be due to the former requiring a higher level of engagement with the material (e.g., the subject is typically asked to make an overt response within a given time limit) than the latter. It is thus plausible that increasing motivation to learn the material would have a greater effect on learning via rereading than via retrieval practice, and in turn reduce the benefit of retrieval practice over rereading. 1.2. Present study We examined whether learner motivation modulates the benefit of retrieval practice. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that when learner motivation is high, the advantage of retrieval practice over rereading would be attenuated, relative to when learner motivation is low. In the first two experiments learner motivation was manipulated using monetary bonuses; in the third experiment we used time savings (i.e., subjects could leave the experiment early) to motivate learning.

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