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ObservationEstablished

Distributed practice produces better long-term retention than massed practice

Weak-link patterns

Brief §8's named failure modes, computed from this claim's own paper roles and status -- not a single weakness score. Patterns B and E aren't implemented yet (need dependency-graph machinery, docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md Phase 11).

No pattern fires on this claim.

Evidence map

Position shows direction, circle area shows citation count. Click a paper for the reason its role was assigned.

OBSERVATIONCLAIMEstablishedOriginal Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. 1,877 citationsCepeda 20061,877 citesIndependent replication — success The spacing effect stands up to big data 59 citationsKim 201959 cites
SupportsDisconfirmsSynthesisCircle area ∝ citation count

Evidence dimensions

Eight independent 0–5 judgments, each with a written rationale. Deliberately never summed into one score.

Evidence strength

254-study meta-analytic synthesis plus large-scale modern data confirmation.

Replication (any kind)

One of the most repeatedly demonstrated effects in cognitive psychology, across a century of work.

Independent replication

Confirmed by groups and datasets independent of the original meta-analysis's authors.

Methodological triangulationscored retroactively

Genuine triangulation - a 254-study lab-experiment meta-analysis plus large-scale real-world learning-platform data, converging.

Methodological quality

Meta-analytic rigor plus large modern datasets; docked one point only because most contributing lab studies predate current preregistration norms.

Predictive success

Has directly informed successful applied interventions (spaced-repetition tools) that work as predicted.

Consensus

Essentially uncontested within cognitive psychology.

Alternative explanations ruled out

Debate exists over the underlying mechanism, but not over whether the phenomenon itself is real.

Scored by human.

Why this status

The derivation rule, evaluated top to bottom, first match wins. This is the rule itself — not a confidence score standing in for one.

  1. 1
    Unknown — unexplored

    2 paper rows (needs <3) and evidence_strength=5 (needs <=1); both required

  2. 2
    Unknown — conflicting evidence

    (a) 0 failure vs 1 success rows -> no; (b) 0 review rows — opposite-verdict test is a human judgment, not a count; (c) 0 conceptual failure vs 0 conceptual success, 1 original -> no

  3. 3
    Unknown — underdetermined

    alternative_explanations=4 (needs <=1) AND evidence_strength=5 (needs >=3)

  4. 4
    Establishedmatched

    independent_replication=5 (>=4), evidence_strength=5 (>=4), consensus=5 (>=4)

  5. 5
    Strong, domain-limitedmatchednot reached

    evidence_strength=5 (>=4) AND independent_replication=5 (>=3), plus a written scope limit (human judgment)

  6. 6
    Active consensus, incompletenot reached

    consensus=5 (>=4) AND (methodological_quality=4 <=3 OR alternative_explanations=4 <=2)

  7. 7
    Plausible, under active investigationnot reached

    independent_replication=5 (needs ==2) AND evidence_strength=5 (needs 2-3), plus recent activity (human judgment)

  8. 8
    Speculativenot reached

    1/2 rows are empirical (needs 0) AND evidence_strength=5 (needs <=1)

  9. 9
    Preliminarynot reached

    2 non-theoretical row(s) exist AND independent_replication=5 (needs <=1)

Recorded rationale

v3 rule 4: independent_replication = 5, evidence_strength = 5, consensus = 5. True-negative control - naive guess and post-read status both 'established', no divergence, which is what makes the other two pilot claims meaningful. Pilot 1.