ArticleBehavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)2025
Exploring Whether Making Second-Language Vocabulary Learning Difficult Enhances Retention and Transfer.
Article in Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- The translation paradox: how full translation increases cognitive load and impairs medical vocabulary retention.BMC medical education · 2026Trial
- A Special Issue Introduction: Educational Applications of Cognitive Psychology.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Four previous and two new experiments from our laboratory are reported, in which college students learned associations between French and English words in a learning phase and then took an immediate retention test. One week later, a delayed test was followed by relearning. Four difficulty manipulations were used during learning: blocking versus mixing semantic categories, translation direction, prelearning, and set size. The first new experiment examined the effect of set size on retention, and the second new experiment examined blocking and mixing semantic categories, as well as translation direction, on learning new vocabulary (transfer). Generally, across the six experiments, difficult conditions provided a disadvantage during learning and immediate testing, but made no difference or provided an advantage during relearning and delayed testing. These results suggest that making the initial learning more difficult does not always lead to superior retention.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.