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delaying first cards improves long term memory - IceCream - 2010-05-19
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delaying first cards improves long term memory - Tobberoth - 2010-05-19
I knew this, but it's always awesome to have academic backing from several sources. This is semicovered in the "myths" section on that Supermemo site. I always delay my initial review by at least one day, more if I'm confident with the words, say if I know the readings of the kanji and the kanji give a decent logical clue to the meaning of the word, I put it in and review it immediately to get the 3 day spacing.
delaying first cards improves long term memory - nest0r - 2010-05-19
Hmm, they seem fixated on 'desirable difficulty' as the underlying factor for the spacing effect? So far as I know, there's no consensus yet ('encoding variability' is another explanation but I'm not convinced), but I haven't read real deeply into this research, as the methodology seems to be behind the times. Personally I feel that the Supermemo explanation of 'stability' works for me (with maybe stuff related to 'PKMzeta' and 'memory reconsolidation', to give a more stable foundation to that on the molecular level beyond their own neural conceptions), at least conceptually, and I try to pair that with things to increase encoding/retrieval (levels of processing, multimodal learning, context-dependent learning, etc.).
The tests also only once seemed to test 'expanding' as also 'delayed'--that is, it seems to me that the only time expanding vs. equal were both delayed was for 1 of 4 tests in Experiment 3, or did I miss something? In that case, they both seemed statistically equivalent, or the results description gave that impression, but as you said, these tests aren't really very long term so it's hard to base anything off that.
For me, the best (initial) delay, per the Supermemo site, is ~24 hours.
As for expanding vs. equal, I think neither of those is as important as 'spaced', just as I try not to focus on the algorithms--I think it should ultimately be a spacing that's semi-automated in accordance with the user's self-feedback, and the main reason for expanding the spacing is simply efficiency, maintaining recall with the least amount of review over time.
Nice find though, I missed this--at first I thought it was from the same location as those other spacing/flashcard .pdfs I linked and wasn't going to read as I already put the rest of them on my 'to do' list.