The Two High-Utility Techniques

Practice testing and distributed practice are the only two of ten common techniques rated high utility — and the 2006 experiment shows why.

Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) reviewed ten common learning techniques and rated only two as high utility: practice testing and distributed practice. Everything else sat lower, with highlighting, rereading and summarisation explicitly rated low utility.

The clearest single number comes from Roediger and Karpicke (2006). Students who restudied forgot 56% of the material within 2 days, while students who practised retrieval forgot only 13%.

That experiment tested recall after 5 minutes, 2 days and 1 week. The retrieval advantage only appeared at 2 days and beyond — at 5 minutes the restudy group was ahead, which is exactly why a smooth reread feels deceptively effective.

Donoghue and Hattie (2021) confirmed the ranking across 242 studies with more than 169,000 participants, so the two-technique result is not a single-study curiosity.

Practically, the two techniques are one loop. A retrieval session is the event; the spacing schedule is when the events happen. Neither requires more hours — only a different placement of the same hours.

• Practice testing: recall from memory before checking the source.
• Distributed practice: spread the same hours across days.
• Low-utility trio: highlighting, rereading, summarisation.

Further reading

• Building a Spacing Schedule
• Habits That Feel Good but Fail