Delayed versus immediate feedback in children's and adults' vocabulary learning.

We investigated whether the superior memory performance sometimes seen with delayed rather than immediate feedback was attributable to the shorter retention interval (or lag to test) from the last presentation of the correct information in the delayed condition. Whether lag to test was controlled or not, delayed feedback produced better final test performance than did immediate feedback, which in turn produced better performance than did no feedback at all, when we tested Grade 6 children learning school-relevant vocabulary. With college students learning GRE-level words, however, delayed feedback produced better performance than did immediate feedback (and both were better than no feedback) when lag to test was uncontrolled, but there was no difference between the delayed and immediate feedback conditions when the lag to test was controlled.