Can harder or less fluent study conditions improve retention even when they feel less effective?

Why a harder-feeling condition can sometimes stick better

One clear example comes from speech motor learning. A systematic review of motor-learning principles applied to speech found that giving summary feedback only every fifth trial—rather than after every attempt—led to better retention two days later [2]. That is a condition that gives the learner less immediate guidance, which plausibly feels less supportive during practice, yet the delayed test favored it. The review frames these principles as conditions thought to promote transfer and retention, so the finding is about a training schedule, not about making the task itself more confusing.

A different kind of support comes from a thermodynamics study comparing instructional modalities. Learners in a haptic-enhanced immersive simulation condition showed conceptual gains and better retention, and they also reported significantly lower mental effort than those in another condition [1]. That complicates the simple story that harder always means better: here the condition linked to better retention was also the one that felt less effortful. What both examples share is that the condition was designed to change how practice is structured, not merely to add discomfort.

Feeling effective and being effective are not the same thing

Several studies measure learners' perceptions alongside retention, and the two do not move together neatly. In a vocabulary study using the Kahoot quiz platform with Moroccan EFL secondary students, the game-based condition had an effect on long-term retention, and students described it as supporting perceived learning effectiveness, with only minor concerns about time pressure and technical difficulties [3]. So here a condition students judged effective did produce retention gains—a case where feeling and outcome aligned rather than diverged.

A 1993 study directly examined presentation mode and perceived difficulty as influences on content retention, defining perceived difficulty in terms of a learner's sense of efficacy [4]. That framing treats the learner's feeling of difficulty as a separate variable to be measured, not as a proxy for how much was actually learned. The practical implication is that a student's sense that a session went badly is weak evidence about what will still be remembered next week.

Feedback conditions shift both difficulty and retention

Motor-learning work on feedback modes compared combined versus single verbal or haptic feedback and tracked acquisition, retention, perceived task difficulty, and competence perceptions [5]. This shows that the type of feedback a learner receives is treated as a condition that can be varied and then tested for retention, with difficulty ratings collected at the end of practice and again at retention. It supports the general point that how practice is arranged matters for what survives, while the specific direction of the effect depends on which feedback schedule is used.

Taken together, the evidence supports a cautious version of the answer: some harder or less-guided conditions do improve retention, as with sparse summary feedback in speech learning [2], but a condition that reduces effort can also be the one with better retention [1]. The safest reading is that the structure of practice—feedback timing, presentation mode, immersion—matters, and that a learner's in-the-moment impression of difficulty is an unreliable guide to which condition will win at the delayed test [3][4].

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