What is the generation effect?

It is the finding that people remember information better when they produce it themselves than when they only read it. A 2007 review of 86 studies found an average benefit of about half a standard deviation.

Does the generation effect work for children?

There is some evidence it does. In a small classroom study, fifth graders remembered science concepts better, even six months later, when they had made up their own examples. Most of the research, though, was done with adults.

Should I stop explaining things to my child?

No. Some things cannot be worked out alone, such as what a word means. Explain those, and give the parts that can be figured out back to your child.

Why Kids Forget What They Are Told, and What Helps Instead

On Tuesday you showed your child how to read a clock. They nodded, said "got it," and read the next one right. By Thursday the big hand and the little hand had swapped places again, and you were back at the start.

The short answer: being told asks a child to listen, while figuring something out asks them to produce the answer, and producing it is what helps it stay. Memory researchers have a name for this, the generation effect.

What the research says

In 1978, Norman Slamecka and Peter Graf ran five experiments with 96 university students. Some words were handed to the students to read. Other words the students had to generate themselves from a clue. The generated words were remembered better in every single experiment, across several ways of testing memory [1].

That was one lab. In 2007, Sharon Bertsch and colleagues pooled 86 studies and 445 effect sizes. The average benefit of generating over reading was 0.40, close to half a standard deviation [2]. Plenty of things in education promise a lot and deliver less than that.

A fair warning, though. Most of that work used adults and word lists, not a seven year old and a clock.

What about children?

There is child evidence, just less of it. In one classroom study, 26 fifth graders spent three weeks on a unit about energy. For 13 of the 26 concepts, they came up with their own examples. For the other 13, they didn't. The children did better on the concepts they had made examples for, both right after the unit and six months later [3]. It was a small study in one classroom, so treat it as a good sign and not a guarantee.

Our own reading of all this is simple. Generating only works when the child has something to generate from. A blank stare isn't a learning event. A child who has seen a few clocks and is asked "what time do you think this one says?" is doing real work. A child who has never seen a clock is just guessing.

Does this mean telling is useless?

No. Some things a child can't work out alone, like what a word means or which way is the "top" of a clock. Tell them those. The idea is to save the telling for the facts that can't be discovered, and give the parts that can be worked out back to the child. A good rule of thumb at home: if you catch yourself explaining something for the third time, try a question instead.

Three ways to turn telling into figuring

Ask for a guess before you explain. "What do you think happens if we add one more block?" Even a wrong guess gives the answer something to land on.
Let them pick the example. If you're talking about fractions, ask which food in the kitchen they'd cut in half, and why.
Stop one sentence early. Say "so if the little hand is on the 3 and the big hand is on the 12, it's…" and wait.

None of this needs a worksheet. It does need you to swallow the answer you already know, which is harder than it sounds at dinner time.

How we built this into a game

A Wonderix game asks a question and then keeps its hands off. In Glowvale, a spirit wants 15 and the child is holding 5. The game doesn't say "add ten." It lets the child try something, shows what happened, and lets them try again. The number the child lands on is theirs, so it's the one they tend to keep.

It's the same thinking behind letting getting stuck be part of the game and behind letting a child change one thing and run it again. In both, the child does the producing.

We haven't measured our own results yet, so everything above about how children learn comes from the wider research.

If you'd like to see the first games when they open to families, you can join the waitlist.

References

These studies describe children in general. They are not findings about Wonderix.

[1] Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592-604. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.4.6.592

[2] Bertsch, S., Pesta, B. J., Wiscott, R., & McDaniel, M. A. (2007). The generation effect: A meta-analytic review. Memory & Cognition, 35(2), 201-210. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193441

[3] Gorrell, J., Tricou, C., & Graham, A. (1991). Children's short and long term retention of science concepts via self generated examples. Journal of Research in Childhood Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02568549109594807

Why Do Kids Forget Things You Tell Them?