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Theoretical explanations of the testing effect (why people learn better from a test than a re-study) have largely focused on either the benefit of attempting to retrieve the answer or on the benefit of re-encoding the queried information after a successful retrieval. While a less parsimonious account, prior neuroimaging evidence has led us to postulate that both of these processes contribute to the benefit of testing over re-study. To provide further empirical support for our position, we recorded ERPs while subjects attempted to recall the second word of a pair when cued with the first. These ERPs were analyzed based on the current response accuracy and as a function of accuracy on the subsequent test, yielding three groups: the first and second tests were correct, the first was correct and the second was not, both were incorrect. Mean amplitude waveforms during the first test showed different patterns depending on the outcome patterns: Between 400 and 700 ms the amplitudes were most positive when both tests were correct and least positive when both were incorrect; mean amplitudes between 700 and 1000 ms only differed as a function of subsequent memory. They were more positive when the second test was correct. Importantly, the later component only predicted subsequent memory when the answers were not overlearned, i.e. only correctly recalled once previously. We interpret the 400-700 ms time window as a component reflecting a retrieval attempt process, which differs as a function of both current and subsequent accuracy, and the later time window as a component reflecting a re-encoding process, which only involves learning from tests, both of which are involved in the testing effect., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

When subjects are given the balls-and-boxes problem-solving task (Kotovsky & Simon, 1990), they move rapidly towards the goal after an extended exploratory phase, despite having no awareness of how to solve the task. We investigated possible non-conscious learning mechanisms by giving subjects three runs of the task while recording ERPs. Subjects showed significant differences in their ERP components during the exploratory phase between correct and incorrect moves. Exploratory incorrect moves were associated with a shallower response-locked N1 component and a larger response-locked P3 component compared with exploratory correct moves. Subjects who solved the task more quickly exhibited a trend towards larger N1 and P3 components. These results suggest that the brain processes information about the correctness of a move well before subjects are aware of move correctness. They further suggest that relatively simple attentional and error-monitoring processes play an important role in complex problem-solving., (Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Subjects performed a rapid feeling-of-knowing task developed by (Reder, L. M., & Ritter, F. (1992). What determines initial feeling of knowing? Familiarity with question terms, not with the answer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 435-451), while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to identify the time course of "feeling-of-knowing" signals. Subjects were shown a series of math problems, some of which were repeated multiple times during the course of the experiment, and subjects had to rapidly decide whether the answer to a given problem could be quickly retrieved from memory (retrieval trials) or had to be calculated on scrap paper (calculate trials). Behavioral results replicated the 1992 study, showing that subjects can estimate whether the answer is known much faster than the answer can be retrieved. ERPs time-locked to the onset of the math problem showed that accurate retrieval trials were associated with greater positivity for an early frontal P2 component (epoched from 180 to 280ms) and a frontal-central P3 component (epoched from 300 to 550ms). Moreover, this feeling-of-knowing signal was not found for subjects who never obtained a successful on-time retrieval. We interpret these findings as suggesting that initial feeling-of-knowing relies on a rapid assessment of the "perceptual fluency" with which the stimulus is processed. If a stimulus is deemed sufficiently familiar, the activation level of an internal problem representation is used to arrive at a decision of whether to search for the answer or to calculate it.