Does testing increase spontaneous mediation in learning semantically related paired associates?

Carpenter (2011) argued that the testing effect she observed for semantically related but associatively unrelated paired associates supports the mediator effectiveness hypothesis. This hypothesis asserts that after the cue-target pair is learned, relative to restudying mother-child, a review test in which is used to cue the recall of child leads to (a) greater activation of the mediator (), and (b) greater strengthening of the links in the cue-to-mediator () and mediator-to-target () associative chain. This chain is then spontaneously used for recalling child when mother is given as the cue in a final test.

Testing enhances both encoding and retrieval for both tested and untested items.

In forward testing effects, taking a test enhances memory for subsequently studied material. These effects have been observed for previously studied and tested items, a potentially item-specific testing effect, and newly studied untested items, a purely generalized testing effect. We directly compared item-specific and generalized forward testing effects using procedures to separate testing benefits due to encoding versus retrieval.