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Yet we work more effectively, scientists have found, when we continually alter our study routines and abandon any “dedicated space” in favor of varied locations. Sticking to one learning ritual, in other words, slows us down.
Studies find that the brain picks up patterns more efficiently when presented with a mixed bag of related tasks than when it’s force-fed just one, no matter the age of the student or the subject area, whether Italian phrases or chemical bonds.
With enough preparation and devotion, each is capable of seemingly wizardlike feats of memory.
If learning is building up skills and knowledge, then forgetting is losing some of what was gained.
it is nature’s most sophisticated spam filter. It’s what allows the brain to focus, enabling sought-after facts to pop to mind.
“The relationship between learning and forgetting is not so simple and in certain important respects is quite the opposite of what people assume,”
The “losers” in memory competitions, this research suggests, stumble not because they remember too little. They have studied tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of words, and often they are familiar with the word they ultimately misspell. In many cases, they stumble because they remember too much.
Without a little forgetting, you get no benefit from further study. It is what allows learning to build, like an exercised muscle.
Memory improved in the first few days without any further study, and only began to taper off after day four or so, on average.
Retrieval strength, on the other hand, is a measure of how easily a nugget of information comes to mind. It, too, increases with studying, and with use.
Compared to storage, retrieval strength is fickle. It can build quickly but also weaken quickly.
The harder we have to work to retrieve a memory, the greater the subsequent spike in retrieval and storage strength (learning).
Consistency has been a hallmark of education manuals since the 1900s, and the principle is built into our every assumption about good study habits. Develop a ritual, a daily schedule, a single place and time set aside for study and nothing else.
we perform better on tests when in the same state of mind as when we studied—and, yes, that includes mild states of intoxication from alcohol or pot, as well as arousal from stimulants. Moods, preoccupations, and perceptions matter, too: how we feel while studying, where we are, what we see and hear.
those who studied and tested in the same condition, the silence-silence group did the worst. They recalled, on average, about half the words that the jazz-jazz or classical-classical groups did (eleven versus twenty).
Could quiet somehow be inhibiting memory?
Just as it would be wonderful if, whenever we had to perform on some test, we could easily re-create the precise environment in which we studied, piping in the same music that was playing, dialing up the same afternoon light, the same mental state—all of the internal and external features that were present when the brain stored the material in the first place.
People learn at least as much, and retain it much longer, when they distribute—or “space”—their study time than when they concentrate it. Mom’s right, it is better to do a little today and a little tomorrow rather than everything at once. Not just better, a lot better. Distributed learning, in certain situations, can double the amount we remember later on.
Studying a new concept right after you learn it doesn’t deepen the memory much, if at all; studying it an hour later, or a day later, does. Jost basically repeated one of Ebbinghaus’s experiments, found the very same thing, and got a law out of it, with his name attached. He managed to sound like he was extending the research without really doing so.
