You leave a meeting feeling pretty good.
There was clear direction, action items were assigned,
everybody nodded. And then two weeks later you
realize everybody walked away with a completely different
version of what was decided. Same meeting, same slide deck,
totally different memories. The gap between we covered this
and we actually remember this causes more team friction than
almost any tooling or process problem that you could imagine.
O Today we're going to unpack why that happens and why
alignment without recall is basically an illusion.
What's up, UX fam? Welcome to another edition of
the Cognition Catalog, where every week or so we'll dig into
a new cognitive bias and explore how that bias can impact how our
team works together and what we can do to ensure we don't get
caught up in the pitfalls. Because working with people is
hard, and the more insights we have into the human edition make
it just a little bit easier to learn more about the testing
effects. You can find more resources at
cognitioncatalog.com. Sign up for the newsletter to
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So this illusion of learning shows up in teams way more often
than we like to admit. Most teams don't fail because
they don't talk enough. They fail because they mistake
talking for learning. Now think about how often this
happens. A decision gets made in a
meeting. There's a slide deck, there's a
discussion, everybody nods along, and then it just quietly
evaporates. 2 sprints later, somebody asks a question that
assumes the opposite decision was made.
Somebody else on the team references A constraint that was
supposedly quote UN quote lockdown.
And then someone else says, wait, when did that change?
But nothing changed. It just wasn't remembered.
Teams fall for this phenomenon constantly.
During road map reviews, Sprint planning, retros, and even on
boarding. We overload people with context.
We assume that exposure equals understanding, and then we move
on. But memory doesn't work that
way. Listening is passive, reading is
passive, and even agreeing is passive.
And passive exposure gives us a dangerous illusion.
We think alignment happened when it really didn't.
Now, onboarding is one of the clearest examples.
New hires will sit through days of reading through pages and
pages of documentation, architecture overviews, process
maps, user flows, strategy decks, training videos, and
Here's how We Do things sessions, and everybody leaves
feeling good. But a week later, that new hire
hesitates. They ask the same questions
again and again, or they avoid making decisions altogether, Not
because they weren't paying attention, but because nothing
forced them to retrieve what they learned.
The same thing happens in retros.
Teams review what went wrong. They talk about lessons learned
and capture action items. But unless those lessons are
actively recalled later during things like planning or
estimation or decision making, that team doesn't actually
change behavior. The retro becomes just a ritual
of reflection, not one of learning.
Even experienced teams fall into this trap during complex
projects. We assume shared context because
we've all been around for a while.
But over time, understanding starts to drift.
People remember different rationales, different risks,
different trade-offs. Alignment starts to decay
quietly until it just blows up and shows up as rework or
frustration or outright conflict.
And this is where the testing effect becomes incredibly
useful. Not as a teaching trick, but as
a team operating principle. So what is the testing effect?
We tend to remember information better and learn more deeply
when we actively retrieve that information from memory rather
than just rereading it over and over.
This phenomenon shows that practice tests and retrieval
practice strengthen memory retention.
More than just passive study, it highlights that engaging our
recall mechanism is itself a powerful learning strategy that
enhances long term memory. The roots of the testing effect
go back to early memory research in the late 1800s and early
1900s. One of the earliest contributors
was Herman Emminghaus and he studied how memory fades over
time. His work on what he called the
forgetting curve shows that information decays quickly
without reinforcement. But what he didn't yet show, but
helped to set the stage for, was how retrieval changes that
curve. The testing effect became more
clearly defined in the 20th century.
As psychologists began to compare different study
strategies, researchers noticed something counterintuitive.
People who spent less time reviewing material but more time
testing themselves often remembered more in the long run.
And this challenged that common assumption that repetition,
petition, and exposure were the best ways to learn.
Modern research in the early 2000s, especially work by Henry
Roediger and Jeffrey Karpic, solidified that idea.
And their studies showed that retrieval practice, being asked
to recall information without prompts, produce stronger,
longer lasting memory than just restudying notes over and over
again. And even when people felt less
confident during testing, their actual retention was higher days
or weeks later. And what makes the testing
effect especially important is that it exposes poses A mismatch
between confidence and competence.
Passive review feels productive, but it doesn't create durable
memory. Active recall feels harder, and
sometimes it's uncomfortable, but it's what actually builds
understanding. And that gap shows up constantly
in how teams think they've aligned until reality proves
otherwise. And inside teams, the phenomenon
quietly shapes what people actually remember versus what
they think they remember. Teams exchange large amounts of
information all the time, through meetings, documentation,
slack messages, presentations. But without opportunities to
retrieve and restate that information, much of it fades
quickly or becomes distorted over time.
And this shows up in day-to-day work when teams repeatedly
revisit the same decisions. They forget why something was
done a certain way, or they disagree on what they previously
aligned on. And often this isn't due to poor
documentation or lack of attention.
It's because the information was never actively retrieved after
it was first shared. Passive exposure only creates
familiarity, not durability. This also influences how shared
understanding forms within a group.
When team members explain ideas of one another, or they
summarize outcomes from memory, or they restate goals without
notes, they are reinforcing collective knowledge.
And those moments of recall help surface misunderstandings early,
before they harden into assumptions that ultimately slow
progress or create friction. So in retrospectives, planning
sessions, cross functional discussions, that retrieval
naturally acts as a diagnostic tool.
When people struggle to recall the decision or rationale now,
it signals that the knowledge was never fully integrated in
the 1st place. Teams that normalize recall
rather than treating it as a failure are better positioned to
course correct and build more resilient shared understanding
over time. And importantly, the testing
effect highlights why psychological safety matters.
Retrieval requires speaking up. It requires thinking out loud.
And maybe most important, it requires being wrong.
If team culture punishes uncertainty, people will start
to avoid recall and they'll default to that passive
agreement. And over time, all this does is
create shallow alignment and hidden confusion that only
surfaces when things finally breakdown.
So how can you harness the testing effect in your
day-to-day? Well, first, tree alignment is
something that you verify, not something that you assume.
Shared meetings and documents. Presentation creates the
appearance of alignment, but recall reveals whether it
actually existed. So asking people to restate
decisions or constraints can surface those gaps early when
they're easy to correct, rather than later when it gets even
harder to fix. Next, design onboarding around
explanation, not exposure. New hires learn faster and
retain more when they're asked to explain workflows, decision
systems back to the team. But make sure they know that
you're not testing their competence.
Reinforce that you're strengthening memory and
confidence at the same time. Next, design team rituals that
reward remembering, not just shipping.
Stand ups, planning sessions, retros.
They can all support retrieval if they ask people to recall
goals, assumptions, and lessons over time.
When teams revisit and they restate what matters, they're
not being repetitive. They're reinforcing the mental
models that guide daily decisions, and next, normalize
recall as a team habit, not as a performance signal.
When recall feels like a valuation, people start to avoid
it. But when it's framed as
collective sense making, it strengthens trust and shared
understanding. Teams that practice retrieval
openly reduce confusion, rework, and unnecessary conflict.
Lastly, maybe the most important but probably the simplest, end
meetings with prompts that require recall.
So instead of ending a meeting by asking, does anyone have any
questions which only invite silence?
Try asking. Can someone summarize what we
just decided or what did we decide or what should we
remember from this? That one question forces recall
and instantly reveals whether alignment actually existed.
And ultimately, the testing effect tells us something simple
and uncomfortable. If people aren't asked to recall
something, they probably won't remember it.
And it's important to remember that correction doesn't require
quizzes or formal tests. It requires intentional
retrieval moments built into everyday work.
All right, y'all, that's it for the Cognition Catalog for today.
I hope we helped to shed a little bit of light on the
testing effect and how we can use it to impact our day-to-day
work. But I'm curious, have you
harnessed the power of the testing effect in your daily
work? How'd it go?
I'd love to hear about it. Let me know what you think on
LinkedIn or shoot me an e-mail at hello@beyonduxdesign.com.
I'd love to hear from you. To learn more about the testing
effect. You can find more resources at
Cognition catalog.com. Sign up for the newsletter to
get a new bias in your inbox every week, and make sure to
subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
You never have to worry about falling for any of these biases
again. And if you think you're getting
something out of the show, I would really appreciate you
leaving a five star review. That would help me out so much.
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