Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Adaptive generation of spacing intervals in learning usingresponse times improves learning relative to both adaptivesystems that do not use response times and fixed spacingschemes (Mettler, Massey & Kellman, 2016). Studies haveoften used limited presentations (e.g., 4) of each learningitem. Does adaptive practice benefit learning if items arepresented until attainment of objective mastery criteria? Doesit matter if mastered items drop out of the active learning set? We compared adaptive and non-adaptive spacing underconditions of mastery and dropout. Experiment 1 comparedrandom presentation order with no dropout to adaptivespacing and mastery using the ARTS (AdaptiveResponse-time-based Sequencing) system. Adaptive spacingproduced better retention than random presentation.Experiment 2 showed clear learning advantages for adaptivespacing compared to random schedules that also includeddropout. Adaptive spacing performs better than randomschedules of practice, including when learning proceeds tomastery and items drop out when mastered.