No, we don’t have an undo button. This is on purpose. While it can be annoying to get a review incorrect because of a legitimate typo, we think there’s a greater danger in allowing or tempting people to retroactively mark a wrong answer as correct. Think of someone saying “oh, I actually totally knew that” once the right answer is revealed and deciding to mark it as correct.

The reason we think this is because of something called “the illusion of knowing.” Researchers use the term to describe the ways our brain convinces itself it knows something when it actually does not. A common example of this would be cramming before a quiz, getting all the answers right, then never touching the material again only to forget it a few months later. Another common example might be someone “undoing” a wrong answer because they felt they actually did know it and should have gotten it right.

Illusions of knowing should be avoided because they don’t build toward your goal of truly learning something. Like someone who crams the night before an exam, if you think you mastered something before you actually did, you’re less likely to spend more time studying that subject. And when you don’t revisit the topic, it doesn’t have a high chance of staying in your long term memory.

If you’re using WaniKani, we want you to learn kanji. We don’t want you to make it to level 60 only to forget everything later, we don’t want you resetting halfway through the program because you’re not recognizing kanji you’ve burned, and worst of all we don’t want you quitting Japanese altogether because you’re frustrated that your knowledge doesn’t seem to be increasing.

The reason we don’t have an undo button is because we think that will help you avoid any illusions of knowing. If you avoid illusions of knowing, we think that will help you remember the kanji in a real, foundational way.

This is not to say some form of undo button will never appear in WaniKani. However, if it ever does, we want it to have a thoughtful implementation that will have a positive learning impact on the largest amount of people.