How Pretesting Students Helps Retain Their Attention

Published Sep 20, 2021 · Updated Mar 09, 2026

Online lectures can lose students faster than many educators realise. At any given point, between a third and a half of students may be mind-wandering, and that share tends to rise as the lecture continues (Bunce et al., 2010).

In all types of lectures, mind-wandering occurs when focused attention drifts away from the material and towards unrelated, self-generated thoughts (Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Because poorer learning outcomes are associated with this behaviour (Risko et al., 2012), finding practical ways to reduce it matters.

Online learning can intensify the problem. Students often join classes in distraction-heavy settings (Hollis & Was, 2016), and they no longer benefit from the same physical presence of an instructor. With online and hybrid teaching now embedded across higher education, this is still a live concern for both learners and educators, especially in online modules where sustaining engagement requires deliberate design.

Researchers have trialled several ways to reduce the negative effects of mind-wandering in lectures, including methods of detection, intervention, and prevention. In this paper, the authors investigate a simpler intervention: pretesting students on information before it is presented, as a way to reduce mind-wandering in online video lectures (Pan et al., 2020), alongside other pre-lecture activities that can improve comprehension.

At first glance, pretesting looks counterintuitive because students are often asked questions before they have learned the answers (Pan et al., 2019). Yet when the correct answers are later shown, or the material is studied soon afterwards, long-term retention improves (Richland et al., 2009). This pretesting effect has been shown across a range of settings, including word pairs and trivia facts (Kornell et al., 2009), as well as educational videos (Toftness et al., 2018).

Why might this work? Pretesting can help students notice gaps in their knowledge and listen more actively for the missing information during study (Carpenter & Toftness, 2017). It may also spark curiosity and sharpen attention (Geller et al., 2017). Work by St. Hilaire & Carpenter (2019) suggests that pretesting can help students focus on the material that was pretested, which may reduce mind-wandering. For educators, that makes pretesting appealing because it is a light-touch change with a clear potential benefit: better focus and better recall.

The authors of this paper performed two experiments, with a focus on learning from video lectures (Pan et al., 2020).

The first experiment investigated interpolated pretesting, where learners answer questions at several points during the lecture. Undergraduate psychology students were split into two groups: a pretest group and a control group. Both groups watched the same 26-minute video lecture, divided into four sections, in a controlled laboratory environment. Before each section, the control group solved algebra problems unrelated to the lecture, while the pretest group answered questions about the content in the next section. After the final video segment, all students completed the same multiple-choice test: half the questions repeated the pretest items and half were new. This design tested whether brief pre-questions could improve attention and recall without changing the lecture itself.

The second experiment repeated the basic design while also investigating conventional pretesting, where all questions are presented before the lecture begins. Students were divided into three groups: control, interpolated pretest, and conventional pretest. For the conventional pretest group, all questions were presented before the four video sections played in sequence. Unlike the first experiment, this study was carried out fully online, so students watched remotely in an uncontrolled environment. That makes the result especially useful for everyday teaching because it tests whether pretesting still helps when students are learning in real-world, distraction-heavy settings.

No significant difference was observed between the final test results of students in the interpolated and conventional pretest groups. This suggests both approaches can improve learning to a similar extent. However, both pretest groups outperformed the control group. For educators, that means there is flexibility: questions can be spaced throughout the lecture or delivered at the start, depending on the format of the session, including Quecture-style teaching that combines pre-lecture material with in-class questions.

In keeping with patterns seen in other similar mind-wandering studies (Bunce et al., 2010; Thomson et al., 2014), all students' reported attention levels waned with time spent viewing the video lecture. However, the reported attention levels of students in both pretest groups were on average 8 to 21% higher across the lecture than those of the control group. That makes pretesting notable not just as a memory aid, but as a practical way to keep students mentally present for longer.

In conclusion, both interpolated and conventional pretesting resulted in improved learning and less mind-wandering when compared with the control groups. This effect was seen in both experiments, suggesting pretesting can work in both controlled and uncontrolled learning environments. The authors concluded that their results further strengthen the argument that pretesting is a 'desirable difficulty': it makes learning feel harder at the start, but improves outcomes in the long term. For lecturers running online sessions, a few well-placed pre-questions may be one of the simplest ways to increase attention without redesigning the whole lecture.

FAQ

Q: What exactly causes mind-wandering during lectures, and how can students be trained to minimise it?

A: Mind-wandering during lectures is often linked to low engagement, competing distractions, or cognitive overload when the material feels hard to follow. Students are more likely to drift when a lecture stays passive for too long. Training can help: note-taking prompts, short quizzes, discussion breaks, and other active-learning techniques all give students a reason to re-engage with the material. The practical lesson from this paper is that even simple pre-questions can prime attention before the lecture content appears.

Q: How effective are other methods, aside from pretesting, in combating mind-wandering in online learning environments?

A: Pretesting is one useful option, but it is not the only one. Interactive learning activities such as quizzes, problem-solving exercises, polls, and discussion tasks can all reduce mind-wandering because they require active participation. Personalised feedback and clearer signposting can help too, especially when students are studying remotely. The broader principle is to reduce passive viewing and give students repeated reasons to refocus.

Q: How do students feel about the pretesting method, and does it affect their motivation to learn?

A: Students may respond to pretesting in different ways. Some find it motivating because it sparks curiosity and shows them what to listen for; others may initially dislike getting questions wrong. The evidence in this paper suggests that the short-term discomfort can still lead to better attention and learning. That means the method is best introduced carefully, with a clear explanation that the goal is to prepare attention, not to grade prior knowledge. Gathering student voice about teaching changes can then help lecturers refine how many questions to use and when to place them.

References

Bixler, R., & D’Mello, S. (2015). Automatic gaze-based detection of mind wandering with metacognitive awareness. International Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation, and Personalization, 31–43.

Bunce, D. M., Flens, E. A., & Neiles, K. Y. (2010). How long can students pay attention in class? A study of student attention decline using clickers. Journal of Chemical Education, 87, 1438–1443.
DOI: 10.1021/ed100409p

Carpenter, S. K., & Toftness, A. R. (2017). The effect of pre-questions on learning from video presentations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 104–109.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2016.07.014

Geller, J., Carpenter, S. K., Lamm, M. H., Rahman, S., Armstrong, P. I., & Coffman, C. R. (2017). Prequestions do not enhance the benefits of retrieval in a STEM classroom. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2, 42.
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-017-0078-z

Hollis, R. B., & Was, C. A. (2016). Mind wandering, control failures, and social media distractions in online learning. Learning and Instruction, 42, 104–112.
DOI: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.01.007

Kornell, N., Hays, M. J., & Bjork, R. A. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 989–998.
DOI: 10.1037/a0015729

Pan, S. C., Lovelett, J., Stoeckenius, D., & Rickard, T. C. (2019). Conditions of highly specific learning through cued recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 634–640.
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01593-x

Pan, S. C., Schmitt, A. G., Bjork, E. L., & Sana, F. (2020). Pretesting reduces mind wandering and enhances learning during online lectures. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 9, 542–554.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.07.004

Richland, L. E., Kornell, N., & Kao, L. S. (2009). The pretesting effect: Do unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15, 243–257.
DOI: 10.1037/a0016496

Risko, E. F., Anderson, N., Sarwal, A., Engelhardt, M., & Kingstone, A. (2012). Everyday attention: Variation in mind-wandering and memory in a lecture. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 234–242.
DOI: 10.1002/acp.1814

Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2006). The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 946–958.
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.946

St. Hilaire, K. J., Carpenter, S. K., & Jennings, J. M. (2019). Using prequestions to enhance learning from reading passages: The roles of question type and structure building ability. Memory, 27, 1204–1213.
DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2019.1641209

Thomson, D. R., Seli, P., Besner, D., & Smilek, D. (2014). On the link between mind wandering and task performance over time. Consciousness and Cognition, 27, 14–26.
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.04.001

Toftness, A. R., Carpenter, S. K., Lauber, S., & Mickes, L. (2018). The limited effects of prequestions on learning from authentic lecture videos. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 7, 370–378.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.06.003

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