{"id":7460579,"date":"2026-11-15T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=7460579"},"modified":"2026-10-22T10:44:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T15:44:40","slug":"retrieval-practice-and-feedback-do-students-know-what-they-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/retrieval-practice-and-feedback-do-students-know-what-they-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Retrieval Practice and Feedback: Do Students Know What They Know?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I talk with teachers about retrieval practice, one question inevitably arises: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;When students try to retrieve information, do they need to know if they got the answer right? Should I give them feedback after retrieval practice exercises?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The short answer to that question is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Retrieval practice helps students more than simple review, even without feedback.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>But that short answer simplifies a complex story. In this blog post, I want to explore an important follow-up question: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&#8220;Does retrieval practice help students evaluate their knowledge more accurately? Does it help them know what they really know?&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Longest River in the World<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Back in 2008, Dr. Andrew Butler and colleagues explored this question in a <a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/2008-08549-016\">pair of studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the first study, several college undergraduates answered 40 general knowledge questions. For example: &#8220;What is the longest river in the world?&#8221; They got feedback on 20 of those questions. For instance, anyone who said the Mississippi is the world&#8217;s longest river learned that the Nile currently has that title. Of course, students did not get feedback on the other 20 questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a quick distraction task, they took a second general knowledge test. This one repeated those 40 questions and also asked 20 more. This test design lets us ask:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Did students score higher on the questions they had already answered (the initial 40) than ones they hadn&#8217;t seen before (the new 20)?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Did feedback matter?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The data make the answers very clear:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>On the new 20 questions, students averaged 24% correct.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On the previously asked questions, students averaged 41% correct <em>even if they hadn&#8217;t gotten any feedback.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On the previously asked questions, they averaged a whopping 87% correct <em>if they did get feedback<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the chance to answer questions once helped a lot. And that chance <em>with feedback <\/em>made an enormous difference: from 24% to 41% to 87%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Enter Metacognition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This first study shows that &#8212; under specific conditions &#8212; feedback helps students get answers right. We want to know: does feedback help them accurately gauge their understanding? That is: are they correctly confident in their right answers, and appropriately uncertain about their wrong ones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Butler repeated his study, with two important changes. First, the follow-up test came two days after the initial test. This time gap means that he can evaluate longer term effects of feedback. Second, the students both answered the questions <em>and<\/em> rated their level of confidence: from 0% to 100%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the previous questions we asked, we want to know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Are students appropriately confident in their answers?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Are they appropriately uncertain about incorrect answers?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Once again, Butler found that recalling information once helped students recall a second time. And, the corrective feedback helped substantially. In addition, he found that <em>feedback brought confidence into alignment with correctness.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Butler offers a lot of data to support this interpretation; I&#8217;ll keep it simple by offering three pairs of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>On the questions that students hadn&#8217;t answered before, they got 33% correct, and believed they had gotten 38% correct. \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In other words: they got <em>most <\/em>answers wrong, and were a bit <em>overconfident<\/em>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On the <strong>no-feedback<\/strong> questions they had answered once before, they got 47% correct, and believed they had gotten 56% correct.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In other words: they got <em>roughly half<\/em> of the answers wrong, and were still a bit <em>overconfident<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On the <strong>feedback <\/strong>questions they had answered once before, they got 83% correct, and believed they had gotten 83% correct.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>In other words, they got <em>most answers right<\/em>, and were <em>appropriately confident<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>One additional point. Butler calculated that students who got feedback were better at distinguishing between their right and wrong answers &#8212; not just that they were appropriately confident overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I started this post by asking: &#8220;does feedback after retrieval practice help students recognize what they really know?&#8221; Butler&#8217;s study gives us a reason to say &#8220;it seems so, yes.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">From Days to Months<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Butler&#8217;s study offers us reason to hope, but it&#8217;s not a slam dunk. At least two concerns suggest we shouldn&#8217;t take its conclusions as final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>First<\/strong>: the study lasted either two hours, or two days. Such a short period of time doesn&#8217;t tell us much about <em>long-term <\/em>learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Second<\/strong>: Butler quizzed students about general knowledge. He didn&#8217;t <em>teach them new knowledge<\/em> and then study the benefits of retrieval practice and feedback. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re glad to have his study, but we&#8217;d like more research please!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7468708\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-1536x1025.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/AdobeStock_1464201810-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Happily, a <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11409-022-09295-x\">different kind of study<\/a> &#8212; led by Dr. Nick Naujoks &#8212; helps fill in those blanks. I won&#8217;t go into all the details; this blog post already has plenty of research methodology in it. But the relevant headlines are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Once again, this study compared students who did NOT get feedback after retrieval practice with those who DID get feedback. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Naujoks worked with students in college classes who learned new material. In other words, the study does a better job looking at actual classroom conditions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>He measured students&#8217; performance on final exams &#8212; taken weeks or months (not days) after initial learning.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>In this study, both students who DID get feedback and those who DID NOT <em>learned more after retrieval practice<\/em>. And: both groups <em>accurately predicted which answers they got right<\/em>. But &#8212; here&#8217;s the big takeaway &#8212; students who did not get feedback after retrieval practice <em><strong>got worse <\/strong>at predicting which answers they got <strong>wrong<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here again &#8212; in this different set of circumstances &#8212; we have reason to believe that <em>feedback after retrieval practice <\/em>helps students evaluate their own level of understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do want to be cautious here. For stats-y reasons, we can&#8217;t use these two studies to make absolute claims. But we can reasonably say that both studies support these hypotheses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>retrieval practice helps students remember, and<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>feedback after retrieval practice helps them understand what they don&#8217;t yet know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Final Note<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This blog routinely warns against large uplifting claims with simple catch phrases. &#8220;Embodied cognition&#8221; sounds great, but I honestly don&#8217;t know what it means. (Any word that encompases everything from mindfulness to direct instruction strikes me as too vague a term to be useful.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For this reason, I&#8217;ve been hesitant to join Team Metacognition. Yes, &#8220;thinking about thinking&#8221; sounds like a good idea. But SO MANY different teaching practices fall under this heading that I&#8217;m unwilling to sign on to all of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this case, reasonable people might say: &#8220;retrieval practice followed by feedback supports students&#8217; metacognition!&#8221; I myself prefer a narrower claim: &#8220;when teachers provide feedback after retrieval practice, we can help students distinguish between what they truly do know and what they think they know.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the unarguable benefits of this kind of &#8220;thinking about thinking&#8221;: students discover what they should think about next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Modest Addendum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In researching this blog post, I&#8217;ve discovered there&#8217;s some controvery about which river is the world&#8217;s longest: the Nile or the Amazon. Butler&#8217;s study says the Nile is the correct answer to that question&#8230;but not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Butler, A. C., Karpicke, J. D., &amp; Roediger III, H. L. (2008). Correcting a metacognitive error: feedback increases retention of low-confidence correct responses. <em>Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition<\/em>, <em>34<\/em>(4), 918.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Naujoks, N., Harder, B., &amp; H\u00e4ndel, M. (2022). Testing pays off twice: Potentials of practice tests and feedback regarding exam performance and judgment accuracy. <em>Metacognition and Learning<\/em>, <em>17<\/em>(2), 479-498.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I talk with teachers about retrieval practice, one question inevitably arises: &#8220;When students try to retrieve information, do they need to know if they got the answer right? Should I give them feedback after retrieval practice exercises?&#8221; The short answer to that question is: &#8220;Retrieval practice helps students more than simple review, even without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7468708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[215,26,12],"class_list":["post-7460579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-feedback","tag-metacognition","tag-retrieval-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7460579"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7469153,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7460579\/revisions\/7469153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7468708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7460579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7460579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7460579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}