Steven C Pan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3602386 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven C Pan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven C |
| FAMILY NAME | Pan |
| SIGNATURE | PAN S C |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9080-5651 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Pretesting and Posttesting in Spelling Acquisition
Understanding how cognitive mechanisms support spelling acquisition across writing systems is a fundamental challenge in educational psychology. We conducted the first controlled comparison of pretesting (generating spellings before instruction), posttesting (retrieving spellings after instruction), and copying (traditional transcription) across alphabetic and non‐alphabetic languages. In two preregistered classroom experiments with Mandarin‐spea…
Generative Processing Strengthens Learning Across Errorful and Non-Errorful Contexts
Errorful generation—making (often) incorrect guesses about unfamiliar information—can enhance learning if accompanied by corrective feedback. Four experiments investigated how feedback processing influences the retention of obscure word definitions. Participants processed feedback via non-generative (reading, copying), elaborative (studying examples or mnemonics), or generative (rephrasing, example generation) methods. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4,…
Interpolated prequestioning increases on-task thoughts, dampens off-task thoughts, and facilitates learning during video lectures
Concurrent testing improves attention generally and selectively during video lectures
Do individual differences in working memory capacity, episodic memory ability, or fluid intelligence moderate the pretesting effect
Higher gF was associated with smaller pretesting effects among college students. • Higher WMC was associated with smaller pretesting effects in online participants. • Pretesting can be more beneficial for persons with lower cognitive ability scores. The pretesting effect refers to the finding that guessing the answers to test questions before learning the correct answers improves memory relative to studying (or reading) without prior guessing. Al…
Pretesting promotes theme extraction but not generalization from moral stories in young children
Although adults commonly tell moral stories to children with the aim of teaching important lessons, they often fail to extract the intended moral themes of these stories. Few interventions to date have successfully addressed this problem. The present study examined the effects of pretesting on children's learning from moral stories. We assigned sixty 5- to 6-year-olds to either a pretesting condition, where they attempted pretest questions about …
Interaction between the testing and forward testing effects in the case of Cued-Recall
Recall from episodic memory has been shown to enhance both memory for the retrieved information (e.g., relative to a restudy control condition; the testing effect, or TE) and memory for different, subsequently studied materials (the forward testing effect, or FTE). Hence, the TE may be subject to an FTE confound when training in a TE experiment involves either testing prior to restudy or when restudied and tested items are randomly mixed. Across …
Empirical Comparison of Imputation Methods for Multivariate Missing Data in Public Health
Sample estimates derived from data with missing values may be unreliable and may negatively impact the inferences that researchers make about the underlying population due to nonresponse bias. As a result, imputation is often preferred to listwise deletion in handling multivariate missing data. In this study, we compared three popular imputation methods: sequential multiple imputation, fractional hot-deck imputation, and generalized efficient reg…
How do college students use digital flashcards during self-regulated learning
Over the past two decades, digital flashcards – that is, computer programmes, smartphone apps, and online services that mimic, and potentially improve upon, the capabilities of traditional paper flashcards – have grown in variety and popularity. Many digital flashcard platforms allow learners to make or use flashcards from a variety of sources and customise the way in which flashcards are used. Yet relatively little is known about why and how stu…
Learning from errors
In some educational contexts, such as during assessments, it is essential to avoid errors. In other contexts, however, generating an error can foster valuable learning opportunities. For instance, generating errors can improve memory for correct answers. In two surveys conducted at three large public universities in North America, we investigated undergraduate students' and instructors' awareness of the pedagogical benefits of generating errors, …
Transfer of test-enhanced learning
Attempting recall of information from memory, as occurs when taking a practice test, is one of the most potent training techniques known to learning science. However, does testing yield learning that transfers to different contexts? In the present article, we report the findings of the first comprehensive meta-analytic review into that question. Our review encompassed 192 transfer effect sizes extracted from 122 experiments and 67 published and u…
Time for considering the possibility that sleep plays no unique role in motor memory consolidation
The hypothesis that sleep makes a unique contribution to motor memory consolidation has been debated in recent years. In the target article (Pan & Rickard, 2015), we reported results of a comprehensive meta-analysis of the explicit motor sequence learning literature in which evidence was evaluated for both enhanced performance after sleep and stabilization after sleep. After accounting for confounding variables, we found no compelling evidence fo…
Sleep and motor learning
It is widely believed that sleep is critical to the consolidation of learning and memory. In some skill domains, performance has been shown to improve by 20% or more following sleep, suggesting that sleep enhances learning. However, recent work suggests that those performance gains may be driven by several factors that are unrelated to sleep consolidation, inviting a reconsideration of sleep's theoretical role in the consolidation of procedural m…
Sleep and motor learning
It is widely believed that sleep is critical to the consolidation of learning and memory. In some skill domains, performance has been shown to improve by 20% or more following sleep, suggesting that sleep enhances learning. However, recent work suggests that those performance gains may be driven by several factors that are unrelated to sleep consolidation, inviting a reconsideration of sleep's theoretical role in the consolidation of procedural m…
Sleep and motor learning
It is widely believed that sleep is critical to the consolidation of learning and memory. In some skill domains, performance has been shown to improve by 20% or more following sleep, suggesting that sleep enhances learning. However, recent work suggests that those performance gains may be driven by several factors that are unrelated to sleep consolidation, inviting a reconsideration of sleep's theoretical role in the consolidation of procedural m…
Time for considering the possibility that sleep plays no unique role in motor memory consolidation
The hypothesis that sleep makes a unique contribution to motor memory consolidation has been debated in recent years. In the target article (Pan & Rickard, 2015), we reported results of a comprehensive meta-analysis of the explicit motor sequence learning literature in which evidence was evaluated for both enhanced performance after sleep and stabilization after sleep. After accounting for confounding variables, we found no compelling evidence fo…
Transfer of test-enhanced learning
Attempting recall of information from memory, as occurs when taking a practice test, is one of the most potent training techniques known to learning science. However, does testing yield learning that transfers to different contexts? In the present article, we report the findings of the first comprehensive meta-analytic review into that question. Our review encompassed 192 transfer effect sizes extracted from 122 experiments and 67 published and u…
Learning from errors
In some educational contexts, such as during assessments, it is essential to avoid errors. In other contexts, however, generating an error can foster valuable learning opportunities. For instance, generating errors can improve memory for correct answers. In two surveys conducted at three large public universities in North America, we investigated undergraduate students' and instructors' awareness of the pedagogical benefits of generating errors, …
How do college students use digital flashcards during self-regulated learning
Over the past two decades, digital flashcards – that is, computer programmes, smartphone apps, and online services that mimic, and potentially improve upon, the capabilities of traditional paper flashcards – have grown in variety and popularity. Many digital flashcard platforms allow learners to make or use flashcards from a variety of sources and customise the way in which flashcards are used. Yet relatively little is known about why and how stu…
Empirical Comparison of Imputation Methods for Multivariate Missing Data in Public Health
Sample estimates derived from data with missing values may be unreliable and may negatively impact the inferences that researchers make about the underlying population due to nonresponse bias. As a result, imputation is often preferred to listwise deletion in handling multivariate missing data. In this study, we compared three popular imputation methods: sequential multiple imputation, fractional hot-deck imputation, and generalized efficient reg…
Interaction between the testing and forward testing effects in the case of Cued-Recall
Recall from episodic memory has been shown to enhance both memory for the retrieved information (e.g., relative to a restudy control condition; the testing effect, or TE) and memory for different, subsequently studied materials (the forward testing effect, or FTE). Hence, the TE may be subject to an FTE confound when training in a TE experiment involves either testing prior to restudy or when restudied and tested items are randomly mixed. Across …
Concurrent testing improves attention generally and selectively during video lectures
Do individual differences in working memory capacity, episodic memory ability, or fluid intelligence moderate the pretesting effect
Higher gF was associated with smaller pretesting effects among college students. • Higher WMC was associated with smaller pretesting effects in online participants. • Pretesting can be more beneficial for persons with lower cognitive ability scores. The pretesting effect refers to the finding that guessing the answers to test questions before learning the correct answers improves memory relative to studying (or reading) without prior guessing. Al…
Pretesting promotes theme extraction but not generalization from moral stories in young children
Although adults commonly tell moral stories to children with the aim of teaching important lessons, they often fail to extract the intended moral themes of these stories. Few interventions to date have successfully addressed this problem. The present study examined the effects of pretesting on children's learning from moral stories. We assigned sixty 5- to 6-year-olds to either a pretesting condition, where they attempted pretest questions about …
Pretesting and Posttesting in Spelling Acquisition
Understanding how cognitive mechanisms support spelling acquisition across writing systems is a fundamental challenge in educational psychology. We conducted the first controlled comparison of pretesting (generating spellings before instruction), posttesting (retrieving spellings after instruction), and copying (traditional transcription) across alphabetic and non‐alphabetic languages. In two preregistered classroom experiments with Mandarin‐spea…
Generative Processing Strengthens Learning Across Errorful and Non-Errorful Contexts
Errorful generation—making (often) incorrect guesses about unfamiliar information—can enhance learning if accompanied by corrective feedback. Four experiments investigated how feedback processing influences the retention of obscure word definitions. Participants processed feedback via non-generative (reading, copying), elaborative (studying examples or mnemonics), or generative (rephrasing, example generation) methods. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4,…
Interpolated prequestioning increases on-task thoughts, dampens off-task thoughts, and facilitates learning during video lectures
Psychology (8 works) · Cognition (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Developmental psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Medicine (3 works) · Mind wandering and attention (3 works) · Neuroscience (3 works) · Artificial Intelligence (2 works)