Editing Spacing effect (section)

=== Study-phase retrieval theory ===
A theory that has gained a lot of traction recently{{when|date=December 2018}} is the ''study-phase retrieval theory''. This theory assumes that the first presentation is retrieved at the time of the second. This leads to an elaboration of the first memory trace. Massed presentations do not yield advantages because the first trace is active at the time of the second, so it is not retrieved or elaborated upon. Greene (1989) proposed a two-factor account of the spacing effect, combining deficient processing and study-phase retrieval accounts. Spacing effects in free recall are accounted for by the study-phase retrieval account. Under the assumption that free recall is sensitive to contextual associations, spaced items are at an advantage over massed items by the additional encoding of contextual information. Thus, the second occurrence of an item in a list reminds the observer of the previous occurrence of that same item and of its previous contextual features. Different contextual information is encoded with each presentation, whereas for massed items, the difference in [[Context (language use)|context]] is relatively small. More retrieval cues, then, are encoded with spaced learning, which in turn leads to improved recall.