Two sides of testing: The influence of interim tests on the misinformation effect and its mechanism

Abstract

: The effect of an interim test on the misinformation effect has been found to have two distinct results. “Retrieval enhanced suggestibility” (RES) refers to the observation that participants who received an interim test were less likely to respond correctly on the final memory test and more likely to report misinformation. “Protective effect of testing” (PET) refers to the observation that an interim test weakened the misinformation effect and improved participants’ memory performance. A systematic review of existing studies shows that these two phenomena can be explained by the reconsolidation account, the attention capture hypothesis, and the retrieval fluency hypothesis (for RES), or by the memory strength theory, the retrieval effort theory, and the discrepancy detection theory (for PET). These related theories differ in both the stage of action and the perspective of explanation, and are integrated into a new theoretical model. In addition, there are some potential influences on the separation of RES and PET, including the original information material, the type of interim test, and the characteristics of the misinformation. Future research should begin with the testing of this theoretical model and expand it in appropriate directions.