Some Retention, but Not Enough

Abstract

The retention of introductory psychology course content 4 months after the end of a semester was compared to the performance of a group of undergraduates who had not taken a psychology course. Instructed students performed significantly better on a multiple-choice test of general psychology content than those who received no instruction, but the differences were disappointingly small in educational terms. Similar retention scores were obtained for both a traditional lecture approach and a teaching strategy that focused on concept learning. Further research preceded by the development of a more adequate test to measure retention is needed to clarify and expand these tentative findings.