Evidence-Based Studying Part 2 - The Pre-Testing Effect
I went down a rabbit hole on the research behind how we study, and built the best of it into a 5-step system. This post covers one piece. Watch the full breakdown in this video.
-Simon
Guessing wrong has never been this productive.
Should you quiz yourself before or after you read a chapter for the first time?
You might have been taught to do it at the end, but the research shows that’s actually backwards.
Pre-testing means attempting questions cold, before you open the book, and it lifts final scores by roughly 13 percentage points. Wrong guesses still count. Researchers spent years assuming you had to answer the pre-test questions correctly for any of the benefit to appear, and that turned out not to be the case.
Same hours, same content, better score, purely from resequencing. It turns out the benefit is fragile though, and it disappears entirely if you get three details wrong. Starting at your next study block, do 5 to 10 questions cold before the chapter and check each answer as you go.
In 2025, Mera, Dianova and Marin-Garcia studied 64 undergraduates learning word pairs. They compared a pre-test with feedback against reading only, holding the material constant. They found the pre-tested group scored about 13 percentage points higher on the final test. King-Shepard and colleagues pooled 12,003 learners the same year and put the effect at 0.66, with feedback beating pre-questions alone.
COMMON PITFALLS TO AVOID
• Checking answers at the end, not immediately
• Googling before you’ve produced your own answer
• Crowdsourced question banks
That middle one has its own trial behind it. Giebl and colleagues gave 240 participants a task in 2021, and the group made to attempt it before consulting Google outperformed the group allowed to search straight away. The struggle is doing the work, so give yourself the 20 seconds of discomfort before you look anything up. Sigayret and colleagues tested 67 learners in 2026 and found no testing-effect advantage when the question bank was crowdsourced, which makes a vetted bank the safer default.
Exam tip: pre-testing is most useful on topics you think you already know, because that’s where a cold question separates recognition from recall. Try it on one of the 105 Topics you’d rate yourself strong on, and note which stems you fumble. Those are the ones that could catch you out on a SAMP (Select-Answer Management Problem), where a familiar-looking stem carries an unfamiliar decision point.
What do attendees say about The Review Course?
“Having the right tips & strategies is the key to every exam.” - Dr. IM, The Review Course 2025 attendee.
References
Mera, Dianova & Marin-Garcia (2025). Lab study, n=64 undergraduates: pretest plus feedback versus read-only on word pairs, 60.9% versus 48.2% on the final test (F=29.05, p<.001). https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.455
King-Shepard et al. (2025). 6,704 learners who guessed versus 5,299 who did not: guessers won by g=0.66; feedback added beat prequestions alone. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10075-7
Giebl et al. (2021). n=240, participants who attempted the task before consulting Google for help outperformed participants who were allowed to search Google right away. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475725720961593
Sigayret et al. (2026). n=67, no difference in the testing effect when the question bank platform was crowdsourced. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1727423
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