Although the mean number of times participants chose to study or to judge during the practice phase were not directly relevant to our main questions, we present these values in Table 1 for interested readers. Also, note that participants in the criterion groups had to cycle through test-judge-study practice trials until they reached criterion, so they had the same number of trials for each of these three activities – means = 23.1 (SEM = 1.9) and 38.2 (2.2) for Criterion 1 and 3 groups, respectively. Most relevant to our main question about the use of testing, the SRL group engaged in less testing than either the Criterion 1 group, t(65) = 4.03, d = .98, or the Criterion 3 group, t(64) = 9.27, d = 2.28. Thus, students who regulated their learning did opt to test themselves, but not as much as students who were required to achieve a criterion of one or more correct recalls during practice.
Table 1.
Number of times participants chose to study or to judge during the practice session.
Experiment/group Study
Judge
Mean SEM Mean SEM
Experiment 1
SRL 18.2 3.7 9.6 1.5
Experiment 2
SRL 18.2 3.4 9.6 1.3
SRL criterion 17.1 2.5 9.9 1.8
Experiment 3
SRL 17.3 2.6 11.9 1.7
SRL incentive 16.8 2.1 10.2 1.6
Note. SRL = self-regulated learning. SEM = standard error of the mean.