Thomas Schreiber, Ph.D.

August 2007

Some Helpful Practical Tips about Learning and Remembering Based on Research in Human Memory CopyrightThomas A. Schreiber2007
Do not copy, distribute, or quote from this document without written permission from Thomas A. Schreiber, Ph.D. Tom.Schreiber@sbcglobal.com

Here are just a few principles Cognitive Scientists have discovered about human memory that have immediate practical implications for students. Some of these principles are obvious (e.g., 3) whereas others are not so obvious (e.g., 1). Note that these principles were first discovered using very simple experimental techniques involving simplified stimuli (e.g., word lists, digit lists, non-sense syllables). Each has been verified using more realistic materials such as sentences, written passages, films, and so forth. Throughout the course, we will consider the experiments that led to the discovery of some of these principles as well as the theoretical basis for them. I am giving you a list of the tips at the beginning of the course, so that you can use them immediately. Even before we get to the technical stuff, I encourage you to use the tips, as well as others I will present in class! In describing each tip I have avoided as much as possible the use of jargon and technical language. If there is something about one of the tips that you dont quite understand, be sure to ask me for clarification. 1) When you have just learned some material, the rate of forgetting (the amount forgotten per unit of time) is greatest in the first 30-60 minutes following learning. After that, the rate of forgetting levels off drastically. The practical hint is that if you review material shortly after learning (e.g., reviewing notes in the first 30-60 min. after attending a lecture), you will forget less and hence you will have to do less "re-learning" over the long run than if you wait for longer periods before reviewing. 2) Distributed learning is more efficient than massed learning. This is known as the "spacing effect." For example, if you devote four hours to studying some material and split the four hours up into four 60 minute sessions spread across several days, your retention of the material will be much greater than if you do all of your studying in a single four hour cram session. Stated another way, if you use massed learning you will have to spend a greater total amount of time studying material to achieve the same level of mastery than if you use distributed learning (this is what I mean by distributed learning being more efficient). 3) Attending to the meaning of material you are learning is much more effective than rote repetition (i.e., reviewing material over and over without thinking about what it means). Mere repetition does not enhance long-term retention very much. Repetition is a specialized process for keeping information active over very short-time periods such as when you repeat a phone

Schreiber

5/18/13,15:57 A5/P5

Practical Memory Tips

2 number over and over until you find a pencil to write it down. A flag should go up when you find yourself simply reading material (mouthing the words) rather than thinking about the meaning of what you are reading. Not attending to meaning frequently occurs unintentionally when you are busy thinking about something else at the same time (e.g., day dreaming about the party you are going to in the evening). When I do this inadvertently, I get to the bottom of a page, and then have no idea what is was that I just read. I am sure that has happened to you. Later in the course, we will see that mere repetition simply consists of the recycling of a phonological code; good for very short-term retention, not so good ordinarily for longer-term retention. 4) When studying material that is very similar either in terms of meaning, sound, or some other dimension, there will be a steady build-up of interference (i.e., confusing one idea with another, forgetting what you just studied). An easy way to reduce this build-up of interference is to get-up and do something completely different every once in a while (e.g., go bake some cookies and then return to studying). This phenomenon is known as "release from proactive interference". As you will see, there is no better example for this than when trying to learn the two different types of interference that can happen: proactive interference and retroactive interference. These terms refer to very similar ideas, they sound very similar, and they look very similar when written down. Without extra steps confusing these terms is very likely to happen. 5) As implied by point 4, interference always will be greater the more similar the material is that you are learning (e.g., if you are in a History course and you need to associate the names of historical figures with certain dates, you are very likely to get confused). Whenever you encounter such material, this should raise a flag that you will need to do extra work to keep information from interfering with each other. 6) When people make judgments about how well they have learned something (Judgments of Learning or JOLs), they are frequently in error. Specifically, they tend to be overconfident (i.e., being confident that you mastered some material only to find out on an exam that you really had not mastered it). There are several reasons why this occurs. One reason is that people are biased by their ability to retrieve information from short-term or working memory. Being able to recall something that you just learned a few minutes ago is not a good indicator of whether you will still be able to remember that material in a few hours or days. One way to decrease overconfidence is to delay your judgments about how well you have learned something following learning. For example, if you make your judgment after waiting for an hour after learning, your judgment will be much more accurate than if you make it immediately following learning. This phenomenon is called the "delayed judgment-of-learning effect. Be sure to also read the next tip. Not that making inaccurate JOLs can be very costly. JOLs are used as a basis for deciding when you should terminate studying. So, if you make JOLs that are overconfident, you will terminate study too early. Not very fun once the exam comes around. 7) When making delayed JOLs you should make them by looking at the cue or question only (e.g., "What is the meaning of the term Savings?) rather than by looking at both the cue/question and the answer. The reason for this is the same as in the previous point. Looking at the answer when making a JOL biases you by increasing the accessibility of the answer temporarily in short-term or working memory. The exam of course will rely on your ability to access the answer from long-term memory and not short-term memory.

Schreiber

5/18/13,15:57 A5/P5

Practical Memory Tips 3

8) Elaborative processing during acquisition is more effective than rote repetition. Elaborative processing refers to the act of relating new ideas to ideas that you already know, whereas rote rehearsal refers to simply repeating facts that you have learned over and over. An example of elaborative processing would be if during the beginning of the course you spend some time thinking about the relation between the Metatheoretical assumptions underlying the information processing approach, and the contributions of each important historical figure we talk about, then thinking about how all of that is related to Thomas Kuhns view about evolutionary/revolutionary cycles in science, and finally how those cycles are revealed in other fields like physics. Whew! Long sentence! Note that elaborative processing involves integration of new knowledge and older knowledge. 9) Effective organization is an important component of learning. Whenever possible, think of categories that can be used to group related concepts together (e.g., "Evidence compatible with theory A", "Evidence incompatible with theory A"). Drawing a hierarchy of related concepts also helps most people. Experimental findings indicate that the process of thinking of categories and hierarchies while learning is just as important as the resulting hierarchy. Note that part of organization is to think of ways in which two or more ideas are similar. Equally important is to devote processing toward distinctiveness. So, always ask yourself a) How is the current concept related to other concepts?, and b) How is the current concept distinct or different from other concepts? Both organization and distinctiveness are important components of learning. 10) Using visual imagery can be a very effective learning aid. For example, to learn the fact that the hippocampus is a structure in the brain associated with memory, you could build a mental picture of a hippopotamus getting lost on his way to class or to learn that the olfactory cranial nerve is involved in the processing of smells, imagine a smelly old pulp mill (smelly old factory get it?) or to learn that Ebbinghaus discovered the savings phenomenon, imagine Ebbinghaus going home to his house on the beach (house, beach, ebb as in tideget it?) but he stops to deposit his paycheck at the bank first (bank-savings). May seem like silly examples, but you can bet that imagery-based strategies are extremely effective. A little bit of creativity is all that is required! As we will see, the effectiveness of imagery is multi-fold. 11) Self-referential encoding is an important technique that promotes long-term retention. When learning, try to relate new concepts to something about yourself such as experiences you've had. For example, when learning about the fact that context can influence pattern recognition (as in the man/mouse demonstration), think about situations where this effect has occurred in your dayto-day experiences. Self-referential processing is a very powerful acquisition technique. 12) A little bit of stress and anxiety is known to enhance memory, a lot of stress and anxiety is known to hurt memory. Think of ways to reduce extreme levels of stress (e.g., don't put off all of your studying until the day before an exam). 13) Better retention will result if during learning you try to anticipate questions that you might be asked on an exam and then generate answers to such questions. So, when studying facts or concepts think of questions about them. If you encounter a similar question later on, memory will be better than when you encounter a question for the first time. This is based on the principle

Schreiber

5/18/13,15:57 A5/P5

Practical Memory Tips

4 of "encoding specificity." So, when I ask questions or suggest possible essay questions, write these down and think about them. The next step is to try to answer them as you study for an exam. Equally important, generate questions yourself while you are studying. This creates associations between the facts and the question. 14) Somewhat related to point 13, the act of generating correct facts on your own during learning promotes better retention than simply reading about them or looking them up. For example, don't just read a textbook or your notes. Set them aside, wait a while, and then try to generate the facts on your own that you have read about. Essentially, generation in part involves self-testing. This principle is based on "the self-generation effect" and is one of the most powerful learning strategies that we know about. Having had practice in the "generation" of facts is especially important for tests that will require you to generate facts (e.g., essay tests, short-answer tests) rather than just recognizing them (e .g., multiple-choice tests). Some words of warning: If during learning, you accidentally generated an incorrect fact (e.g., if during self-testing, you accidentally thought of the name "Wundt" in response to the question "Who is known as the father of empirical memory?" when the correct answer is Ebbinghaus), then you will need to do extra work to prevent yourself from retrieving the incorrect fact on the test. The self-generation effect works regardless of whether what is generated is right or wrong. In either case, generated material will be retained very well. 15) A related principle involved here is the principle of "retrieval blocking" (also known as retrieval inhibition), which states that retrieving erroneous information in response to some memory cue will increase the likelihood with which the cue will elicit that information when the cue is encountered again. Repeated retrieval of erroneous information can block or interfere with your ability to retrieve the correct information (e.g., repeatedly thinking about Wundt, can block your ability to think of the right answer). Retrieval blocking also can occur when you have to think of lists of things (e.g., "things to get at the store", "The assumptions of Roediger's theory of implicit memory", The name of the seven dwarves). In this case, what frequently happens is that you can retrieve everything you want except for the last one or two items. The retrieval blocking principle here would suggest that you might repeatedly think about the items you have already retrieved, and this blocks retrieval of the remaining items. A high degree of learning using effective strategies reduces (but never eliminates) the likelihood that retrieval blocking will occur. If during a test you experience retrieval blocking, then use the strategy suggested in point 4. Try to think of something completely different for a few minutes, and then go back to the question in which retrieval blocking occurred. If you are lucky, there will be a release of the blocking effect and you may spontaneously recover the blocked information. 16) Use mnemonics when learning. Here are some common ones: Construct acronyms in which the letters represent the first letters of concepts. (e.g., Roy G. Biv =the colors of the visible light spectrum or "red orange yellow green blue indigo violet" or FACE=musical notes). You can construct sentences as well (e.g., On old Olympus towering top a fin and German viewed some hops" stands for the 12 cranial nerves or "olfactory optic occulomotor, trochlear trigeminal abducens facial auditory glossopharyngeal vagus spinal hypoglossal", Every Good Boy Does Fine=musical notes on the bars, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally=precendence rules of mathematical operators------can you think of others? Can you invent new ones?). In these

Schreiber

5/18/13,15:57 A5/P5

Practical Memory Tips

5 examples, the letters act as cues for the concepts. What is critical is that you devoted time associating the letters with the concepts and that the acronym or sentence is meaningful in some way. Acronyms that do not form real words (e.g., BOC) generally are not retained as well as those that do. You can also construct stories that will remind you of important ideas. For example, to learn the formula for converting Celsius to Fahrenheit: F=9/5C +32 "Friday is the same nine to five drag in College but I only have 32 more credits to take." There are many others techniques that we will discuss in class (e.g., Peg word method, Keyword Method, Method of Loci). 17) On tests of recognition (e.g., multiple-choice), people frequently base their selection on how familiar a choice seems. Familiarity is not always associated with accuracy. For example, a choice may consist of a correct statement that seems familiar in the sense that you have heard it before, but it may not be the correct answer for that particular question. Don't be fooled by how familiar something seems to you. Stop and think 18) Also on tests of recognition, difficulty depends on how similar the alternatives are that you have to choose from. The more similar they are, the more difficult the test will be. This means that during learning, you will need to use strategies that help you discriminate between similar ideas. 19) People are frequently biased by the ease with which information can be recalled from memory. When some fact is retrieved quickly and easily, people frequently conclude with high confidence that this fact must be correct. Unfortunately, there are many factors that can affect the ease of retrieval and confidence other than accuracy (e.g., see item 13).Heres an example: Try to answer the following question: What is the capitol of Australia? Now, think about how confident you are that you came-up with the correct answer. Most people come-up with Sydney and are typically very confident about it. Why? Everyone has heard of Sydney, it comes to mind very quickly, and besides, people can think of lots of related information (e.g., what the opera house looks like, the summer Olympics, etc.). Unfortunately, Sydney is the wrong answer. Your memory system frequently produces illusions of knowing! 20) Once again, on tests of recognition and in many other circumstances, people tend to be overconfident in the choices they make. One reason is because of confirmation bias, which concerns the tendency to think about reasons why a choice that is made is the correct choice. Thinking only about confirming reasons tends to inflate confidence judgments. One solution is to generate some negative reasons. That is, generate some reasons why a particular choice might not be the correct one. Try this with the capitol of Australia question. 21) In general, memory will be best when the circumstances of learning match the circumstances of testing. Your brain likes consistency. For example, when your mood, physiological state of arousal, and even the physical environment that you are in during learning and testing are the same, memory will be better than when they are different. You obviously cannot do all of your studying in the classroom in which an exam will be given. To compensate for that, imagine yourself in the classroom even when you are studying elsewhere or review your notes in class prior to each lecture. In addition, using good acquisition strategies (e.g., the DOSES-S factors), you can alleviate changes in context to some extent.

Schreiber

5/18/13,15:57 A5/P5

Practical Memory Tips 6

22) People frequently spend lots of time studying material without benefiting from it. This phenomenon is known as "the labor-in-vain effect" . A corollary of this phenomenon, implied by many of the principles listed above, is that there frequently is not a high correlation between the total amount of time devoted to learning and the degree to which material is mastered. The reason for this is that people to do always use good acquisition strategies. What matters much more than the amount of time is what kinds of activities take place during some period of time. Mastery of material will require substantially less time when effective learning strategies (e.g., imagery) are employed compared with using ineffective learning strategies (e.g., mere repetition). 23) Motivation to learn does not have any direct benefits on memory. That is, simply wanting to learn, is not helpful. Motivation to learn can have positive indirect effects, however. If being motivated to learn, gets you choose an effective learning strategy, then motivation affects memory indirectly. Note, however, that choosing an effective learning strategy is the key. 24) Similar to point 22, importance of some material does not by itself affect memory. That is, important things are not automatically remembered any better than unimportant things. What matters is how the material was processed during learning and how that material is processed during testing. 25) Cue familiarity effects.