Skill-building exercises and generalizing psychological concepts to daily life

In an introductory course, students took a quiz on each set of 2 chapters, then prepared short, skill-building assignments that focused on application of the material to daily life. To test the effects of the assignments, for 1 of the 2-week segments students participated in 1 of 3 experimental cond itions: quiz only, skill-building assignment only, or a combination of the 2. Eight weeks later the students' ability to apply the concepts to daily l ife was tested. Those who carried out the skill-building exercises performe d much better at applying concepts.