Prequestions Enhance Learning, but Only When They Are Remembered

Answering prequestions benefits learning, but this benefit is mostly specific to material that was relevant to the prequestions (prequestioned material) and does not extend to other, nonprequestioned material. The current study examined whether this specific benefit is due to selective processing of prequestioned information during a learning experience. In 4 experiments, participants were assigned to a prequestion group or control group before viewing a 30-min video lecture. In Experiment 2, participants were instructed to take notes on information they thought was important during the video; in Experiment 3, the prequestion group was instructed to write down the answers to the prequestions; and in Experiment 4, the prequestion group was given the prequestions and instructed to answer them while viewing the video. On a later posttest in all experiments, the prequestion group outperformed the control group, but only for prequestioned material. Further, this benefit only occurred when the prequestion group successfully discovered the answers to the prequestions during the video by writing them down (Experiments 2 and 3) or circling them (Experiment 4). These results suggest that prequestion benefits depend on the degree to which participants can successfully notice and discover the answers to the prequestioned material during a video lecture. Public Significance Statement Asking students questions before they learn something is beneficial, but this benefit tends to be highly specific. Here we show that prequestions have significant but limited benefits on learning by focusing participants' attention on the prequestioned material that they can successfully remember and discover the answers to while viewing a video lecture.