Every learner has to face situations in which they have to study more information than they are able to remember, asking themselves a question: Should I continue learning or stop completely? Our study examined potential conditions under which learning termination might be beneficial for later memory performance. We hypothesized that learning termination may be particularly beneficial when a single concept is associated with a lot of information - a phenomenon known as the cue-overload effect. We conducted two experiments employing a stopping paradigm, in which half of the participants had the option to terminate learning and the other half did not. In Experiment 1 (N = 72), when participants studied unrelated cue-target word pairs (e.g., rice-prince) shown randomly on screen, 89% opted to stop. In Experiment 2 (N = 80), when they were given semantically related category-exemplar word pairs (e.g., fruit-cherry) shown sequentially by category, only 20% of participants stopped. In terms of cued recall, Experiment 2 was a much easier task than Experiment 1 but regardless of the perceived difficulty of study materials, terminating learning led to negative consequences. Although it may be impossible to entirely prevent learners from making inadequate decisions when studying, the sole awareness of the circumstances in which those decisions are more likely serves as a major consideration for educators and learners alike.

Authors:
Ngoc Diep Le, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Vanessa Cieplinska, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
Julia Mazurek, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Katarzyna Baran, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Aleksandra Krogulska, Jagiellonian University, Poland
Elizabeth Maylor, University of Warwick, United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Ms Julia Mazurek is a Postgraduate Student in Applied Psychology at Jagiellonian University, Poland, focusing on the consequences of learning termination. With a keen interest in learning, she is passionate about the Japanese language and nutrition.

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