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With the globalization and impact of Internet, a new wave of English as public language is occurring in Japanese corporations. Learning English in an efficient ways is still a challenge. In this manuscript, we introduce the forgetting curve and spacing effect, algorithms in the software SuperMemo. We also propose an experiment project on how to test learning English words based on the spacing effect. A pre-experiment result is also given.

Spaced repetition of the squeaking sound commonly used by ornithologists to lure birds resulted in a rapid decline in responsiveness. This decline is attributed to habituation in the absence of reinforcement normally obtained by participation in the mobbing of a predator.

Encoding-variability theory presumes that there is greater encoding variability when repetitions are spaced than when they are massed and that encoding variability is positively related to both recall and apparent frequency. The first presumption was tested by assessing variability in associations to items that were repeated under conditions of either massed or spaced repetition. The validity of the presumption was called into question by a finding of more associations to massed than to spaced repetitions. Findings for recall and apparent-frequency measures administered after the word-association cover task were congruent with findings from prior studies of spacing effects. Hence, there is no reason to think that memory processes accompanying the word-association task differ from memory processes occurring with cover tasks typically used in studies of spacing effects.

An important piece of evidence favoring an 'attention' explanation of the spacing effect was reported by Elmes, Greener, and Wilkinson (1972). They found that an item following a repeated item in a list was remembered better if it followed a massed repetition than if it followed a spaced repetition. A series of experiments was done to establish the generality of that result, Experiments I, II, and III in the series representing successively closer approximations to the original study. All three experiments failed to confirm the earlier finding.