What it does
The Recall Quiz pulls people from your Pals list and asks you to remember things about them: names, where you met, a fact you'd written down. It's lightweight and you can run a quick round in under a minute.
Use it before:
- A wedding, reunion, or party where you'll see lots of people you don't see often.
- A conference where you want to sound like you remembered someone from last year.
- A trip home for the holidays.
- Just on a Tuesday, the way someone might do a crossword.
Why testing yourself works
This is grounded in one of the most replicated findings in cognitive psychology: the testing effect.
In a 2006 study, Roediger and Karpicke had students either restudy a passage repeatedly or take retrieval tests on it. After five minutes, restudying won. But after two days and after a week, students who had been tested remembered substantially more than students who'd just reread the material [1]. The act of pulling information out of memory strengthens the memory more than passively putting information back in.
Applied to people: a quick recall quiz five minutes before you walk into a party will outperform reading their notes for the same five minutes, especially if the party is later in the day rather than right now.
Testing effect compounds with the spacing effect: short quizzes spread across multiple days beat one long cramming session. A two-minute quiz on Sunday plus a two-minute quiz on Tuesday will give you better recall on Friday than a six-minute session the morning of.
Setting up a quiz
Before a round, you choose how hard and how broad it is:
- Time Range. How far back to draw from, from the last 24 hours out to a year. A short range drills the people you just met; a long one keeps everyone fresh.
- Cards per Session. 5, 10, or 20 questions. Five is a quick warm-up; twenty is a proper study session.
- Answer mode. Multiple choice (pick from four names) or free recall (type the name). More on this below.
- Tag Groups. Quiz everyone, or narrow to specific tags - just the people from one event, or one friend group. Handy the day before you'll see them.
Then tap Start Quiz.
Taking the quiz
Each question shows what you know about a person - their photo or initials, the notes you wrote, and their tags - and asks you to come up with their name. In multiple choice, the right pick turns green and a wrong one turns red, with the correct answer revealed alongside, so you always learn the name even when you miss. The card glows green once it's answered, and a progress bar at the top tracks how far through the round you are.
Multiple choice or free recall
In the setup you choose how you're tested:
- Multiple choice. betterpal shows a person and four names to pick from. Quick and low-friction, good for a warm-up or when you're rusty.
- Free recall. Type the name from memory. It opens with a single hint - "Friend of Maya," a note you wrote, or where they live - and you can Reveal another hint if you're stuck, or Skip if it just won't come. betterpal checks your answer (forgiving small spelling and capitalization differences), shows you what you typed, then reveals who it was.
Free recall is the harder, more honest test. Producing a name from scratch is a stronger act of retrieval than recognizing it in a list, so it tends to build more durable memory, the same reason the testing effect above works. Start with multiple choice if you're rusty and switch to free recall as the names get easier.
What to write so the quiz is useful
The quiz can only ask you about details you've put in. A few practical patterns:
- For new people, write at least one specific fact: their job, where they live, what they were working on. "Met Alex at the conference" is harder to quiz than "Alex, music app for guitarists, lives in Brooklyn."
- For people you already know well, add the things you forget. Partner's allergies. Your sibling's friend's name. Your boss's spouse's career.
- Keep notes short and concrete. The quiz is more effective on facts than on impressions.
Common questions
Does the quiz score me?
No grading. The point is the act of trying to remember, not the result.
Can I quiz only certain people?
Yes. If you've filtered by tag, the quiz can be scoped to that filter. Useful for studying just the people you'll see at a specific event.
Does this require an internet connection?
No. Like the rest of betterpal, the quiz runs locally on your device.
References
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255. PubMed