Sans Forgetica

Do students learn better with material that is perceptually hard to process? While evidence is equivocal on the matter, recent claims suggest that placing materials in Sans Forgetica, a perceptually difficult-to-process typeface, has positive impacts on student learning. Given the weak evidence for other similar perceptual disfluency effects, we examined the mnemonic effects of Sans Forgetica more closely in comparison to other learning strategies across three preregistered experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 233), participants studied weakly related cue-target pairs with targets presented in either Sans Forgetica or with missing letters (e.g., cue: G_RL, the generation effect). Cued recall performance showed a robust effect of generation, but no Sans Forgetica memory benefit. In Experiment 2 (N = 528), participants read an educational passage about ground water with select sentences presented in either Sans Forgetica, yellow pre-highlighting, or unmodified. Cued recall for select words was better for pre-highlighted information than a unmodified pure reading condition. Critically, presenting sentences in Sans Forgetica did not elevate cued recall compared to an unmodified pure reading condition or a pre-highlighted condition. In Experiment 3 (N = 60), individuals did not have better discriminability for Sans Forgetica relative to a fluent condition in an old-new recognition test. Our findings suggest that Sans Forgetica really is forgettable.

在感知处理上颇具挑战性的材料是否有助于学生更好地学习？尽管关于此问题的证据尚无定论，但近期的研究主张，将材料置于感知处理难度较大的字体Sans Forgetica中，对学生的学习可能产生积极影响。鉴于其他类似感知障碍效应的证据较为薄弱，本研究通过三项预先注册的实验，对Sans Forgetica的识记效果进行了更为深入的探究，并与其他学习策略进行了比较。在实验1（N=233）中，参与者学习了一组弱相关提示-目标配对，其中目标以Sans Forgetica字体呈现或存在缺失字母（例如，提示：G_RL，提示效应）。提示回忆性能显示提示效应显著，但Sans Forgetica并未展现出记忆上的优势。在实验2（N=528）中，参与者阅读了一篇关于地下水的教育性段落，其中部分句子以Sans Forgetica字体、黄色预高亮或未修改的形式呈现。对于预高亮信息，提示回忆的效果优于未修改的纯阅读条件。关键的是，与未修改的纯阅读条件或预高亮条件相比，以Sans Forgetica字体呈现的句子并未提升提示回忆的效果。在实验3（N=60）中，个体在旧-新识别测试中对于Sans Forgetica字体的辨识度并不优于流畅条件。我们的研究结果表明，Sans Forgetica确实是一种易于遗忘的字体。