On the cost and benefits of restudying: exploring the list strength effect in self-guided learning.

Across five experiments we examined whether restudying a self-selected subset of items impairs memory for the remaining non-restudied items, and enhances memory for the restudied items. This question was inspired by research on the , in which re-presentation of only a subset of items from a list impairs recall for items presented only once, and enhances memory for items presented twice. We found that following initial encoding of all items, honouring participants' restudy selections did indeed impair recall for the non-restudied items relative to when no items were restudied.