Active transitive inference: When learner control facilitates integrative encoding

Research in education and psychology has shown that “active learning” improves learning outcomes over passive conditions. Recent work suggests that one explanation for these findings is that learner control improves episodic memory for study experiences. It is less clear how active learning impacts the integration of those experiences into flexible, generalizable knowledge. This study used a novel active transitive inference task to investigate how people learn a relational hierarchy through self-directed selection of premises. Active control improved memory for studied premises as well as transitive inferences involving items that were never experienced together. Moreover, active learners exhibited systematic search, generating sequences of overlapping premises that facilitate relational integration. Critically, however, advantages from active control were not universal: Only participants with higher working memory capacity benefited from the opportunity to select data. These findings provide striking evidence that active control enhances integrative encoding, but only among individuals with sufficient cognitive resources.