Abstract: Findings on testing effect indicate that learning doesn’t occur only by encoding, and testing doesn’t just serve as an evaluating tool as well. Testing or retrieval practice can enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, this happens even when there is no feedback after testing. The authors try to review the empirical literature about testing effect from the following aspects: The positive effect of testing under different experimental conditions, such as free recall, paired-associate learning, recognition, and also the basic effects in educational settings; the negative effect of testing including retrieval induced forgetting, negative suggestion effects and false memory; theories account for the positive testing effect based on different perspectives, such as additional exposure, over-learning, effortful retrieval, desirable difficulties and transfer-appropriate processing. At last the authors discuss some inconsistent results of the current studies and the implication of testing effect, and expect the future research

Key words: testing effect, negative effect, retrieve, long-term memory