Students are taught to question why? And explain the answer themselves to enable detailed recall. For example, students might be asked to explain a stated fact. Variation across past studies include the questions “Why does it make sense that...?”, “Why is this true?”, and simply “Why?” However, the majority of studies have used prompts following the general format, “Why would this fact be true of this [X] and not some other [X]?” (8).

Rates as moderate due to current research on generalization. Elaborative interrogation works well for many factual topics, but may not be appropriate for more dense and complex material. Research also shows that this study method “may be limited for learners with low levels of domain knowledge” (11).