Retrieval and restudy practice for related and unrelated words

The data presented here was collected in order to explore the relationship between episodic memory and benefits of retrieval and restudy practice across different levels of semantic relatedness. We hypothesized that retrieval practice produces more memory benefits than restudy practice, that the advantage of retrieval over restudy practice is larger for unrelated than for related words, and that the advantage of retrieval over restudy practice are positively related to episodic memory when learning unrelated words. Members of the community (n = 114) learned related and unrelated pairs of words through restudy or retrieval practice, and completed a measure of episodic memory. After 24 hours, participants completed a final recall test. After classifying participants based on the learning strategy that produced the most memory benefits for them (e.g., retrieval or restudy), the results showed that both the benefit of retrieval and the benefit of restudy practice are statistical effects, of similar magnitude across semantic relatedness, and without relationship to episodic memory. However, the benefit of retrieval practice was larger than the benefit of restudy practice for related words.