No evidence of a visual testing effect for novel, meaningless objects.

Abstract

The testing effect is a well-established phenomenon in which memory is better for information that has been enhanced through practice tests rather than through restudying. However, this phenomenon has been studied almost exclusively with verbal or semantically meaningful material. We explored whether the testing effect holds for abstract visual material that lacks both meaning and verbal labels. In a series of six experiments, no evidence for a testing effect was found. Each experiment changed the nature of test practice in different ways that were designed to bolster test practice relative to restudy, such as imposing a delay before the final test, providing different kinds of choice options, providing different kinds of practice feedback, and using drawing as the form of test practice, and yet, the performance after test practice was either similar to the performance after restudy or in some cases significantly worse than restudy (i.e., a negative testing effect). We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, which suggest either that the testing effect relies on properties that our stimuli did not possess-for example, semantic content, high-dimensional content, or preexisting neocortical representations-or that eliciting a testing effect for visual material requires radically different task parameters than for verbal material. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).