This difference in mean values may be reflected in the absence of an appropriate context presented during the encoding phase. It can be seen that the Context Before group had more retrieval cues than the Context Never group (Bransford et al. 1972), leading to easier comprehension and retention. But as highlighted in Bransford et al. (1972), comprehension does not necessarily mean correct recall but rather participants have a better understanding of the passage than if the context had not been presented at all. This study was conducted on first-year psychology students, many of whom already use practice tests and rewriting as a study technique, rather than rereading. Therefore they could get used to the tested condition and perform better in remembering the sentences even without the presented context. One potential solution is to ask participants about their primary study technique before conducting the experiment to see how many participants might be unfairly advantaged in recall
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