An experimenter wished to examine the effects of massed versus distributed practice on learning nonsense syllables. He used three treatment groups and randomly assigned the participants to one of the conditions. Group I practiced a list of 20 nonsense syllables of 30 minutes for one day (massed). Group II practiced the same list for 30 minutes per day for two consecutive days (distributed I). Group III practiced the same lists for 30 minutes per day for three consecutive days (distributed II). The experimenter assessed each group’s memory for the nonsense syllables with a free-recall test. The mean recall of the 20 syllables for Group I was 5.2; for Group II the mean was 10.0; and for Group III the mean was 14.6. All means were significantly different by ANOVA and post-hoc comparisons. The experimenter concluded that distributed practice is superior to massed practice.