Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes
Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer and Vaughan build on research showing that disfluency, the metacognitive experience of difficulty, encourages deeper processing, which typically improves retention. They examine whether making educational materials harder to read perceptually improves retention. A laboratory study found that harder to read fonts increased retention, and a second study extended the finding to real classrooms. They conclude that perceptual disfluency can act as a desirable difficulty in education and discuss implications and caveats.
Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer and Vaughan build on research showing that disfluency, the metacognitive experience of difficulty, encourages deeper processing, which typically improves retention. They examine whether making educational materials harder to read perceptually improves retention. A laboratory study found that harder to read fonts increased retention, and a second study extended the finding to real classrooms. They conclude that perceptual disfluency can act as a desirable difficulty in education and discuss implications and caveats.
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Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the bold (and the italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111-115. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.012