... experimentally pinpoint factors that aid in memory. He proposed that distributed practice (items learned over a period of time rather than all at once) was most effective for long term memory. His findings were later confirmed by an experiment run by Bahrick and Phelps which tested the participants on Spanish vocabulary they had learned eight years prior. They found that those who had learned over longer periods of time remembered more than those who had learned through massed practices. Of course, there is an alternative theory called the Total-Time Hypothesis. This hypothesis states that learning depends on the amount of time spent altogether, not the way it is spaced out. This theory has several drawbacks in an experimental setting because it is difficult to control the attention span of participants and would have no external validity in the real world. The impact of these theories on the idea of "learning" ...

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