Meeting the challenge of the Psychonomic Society's 2012 Guidelines on Statistical Issues: Some success and some room for improvement.

The Psychonomic Society (PS) adopted New Statistical Guidelines for Journals of the Psychonomic Society in November 2012. To evaluate changes in statistical reporting within and outside PS journals, we examined all empirical papers published in PS journals and in the Experimental Psychology Society journal, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (QJEP), in 2013 and 2015, to describe these populations before and after effects of the Guidelines. Comparisons of the 2013 and 2015 PS papers reveal differences associated with the Guidelines, and QJEP provides a baseline of papers to reflect changes in reporting that are not directly influenced by the Guidelines.

Failure of further learning: activities, structure, and meaning.

Previous research has shown that little benefit is achieved through spaced study and recall of text passages after the first recall attempt, an effect that we term the failure-of-further-learning. We hypothesized that the effect occurs because a situation model of the text's gist is formed when the text is first comprehended and is consolidated when recalled; it dominates later recall after verbatim memories of more recent study episodes have been lost. Experiments 1 and 2 attempted to circumvent the effect by varying the activities of participants and requiring interactive exploration.

Part-set cuing of texts, scenes, and matrices.

In four experiments, we extended the study of part-set cuing to expository texts and pictorial scenes. In Experiment 1, recall of expository text was tested with and without part-set cues in the same order as the original text; cues strongly impaired recall. Experiment 2 repeated Experiment 1 but used cues in random order and found significant but reduced impairment with cuing.

Effect sizes in memory research.

Effect sizes are omitted from many research articles and are rarely discussed. To help researchers evaluate effect sizes we collected values for the more commonly reported effect size measures (partial eta squared and d) from papers reporting memory research published in 2010. Cohen's small, medium, and large generic guideline values for d mapped neatly onto the observed distributions, but his values for partial eta squared were considerably lower than those observed in current memory research.

Effect size estimates: current use, calculations, and interpretation.

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association, 2001, American Psychological Association, 2010) calls for the reporting of effect sizes and their confidence intervals. Estimates of effect size are useful for determining the practical or theoretical importance of an effect, the relative contributions of factors, and the power of an analysis. We surveyed articles published in 2009 and 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, noting the statistical analyses reported and the associated reporting of effect size estimates.

Expanding retrieval practice: an effective aid to preschool children's learning.

The benefits of expanding retrieval practice for preschool children were explored in two experiments. In Experiment 1, three groups learned names for six plush toy pigs using expanding retrieval practice, a reward incentive, or a control condition. Reward did not significantly improve learning but retrieval practice doubled recall.

The improved name game: better use of expanding retrieval practice.

Morris and Fritz (2000) demonstrated the effectiveness of the name game as a retrieval-practice based technique for learning the names of group members. We hypothesised that a reversed version of the name game would be even more effective. Performance was contrasted with a no-retrieval condition that mimicked the name game in every way except for the retrieval of the names, allowing an estimate of the specific contribution of retrieval practice.