Optimum rehearsal patterns and name learning

Two kinds of practice are distinguished. In one, new information is presented repeatedly for study. In the other, of ten exemplified in name learning, a fact' is presented just once, and subsequent rehearsal takes the form of "tests". Previous results and theory suggest that different schedules of rehearsal may be optimal in the two cases., We report experiments on name learning that compared various rehearsal patterns. Given a fixed number of rehearsals in a fixed period, a pattern of increasing intervals between successive rehearsals was best for test-type practice, while uniform spacing was slightly better if the information was repeated.