peut-être

Ever felt frustrated cos you start to realise that your distinctively sharp memory with learning information is significantly declining? I have.
Ever thought, "Shit i studied this last night, but i cant remember a single thing"? I have
Ever felt like killing yourself for staying all night to cram for your paper the next day only to arrive at the exam with a blank mind?
Ever felt like this pie chart below is so bloody true? haha

Perhaps maybe all that isnt because of a poor memory nor because of a lack of studying hard enough but because of our study methods! I am reading an article: Increasing Retention without Increasing Study Time (Rohrer and Pashler, 2007) for my Journal Critique paper and I thought that the findings were really interesting to share!

First Finding:
They investigated the effects of over-learning i.e. continuing to revise the same topic even though you've already achieved error-free performance.

And they found that it is a waste of time if u use overlearning in your study techniques cos although over learning increases short-term performance, the benefits decrease sharply over time. (So it is good to over-learn if youre studying last minute, but its also not practical to do so cos there's most likely not enough time!) In other words, once we have achieved error-free performance, we should stop revising that same topic!

Second Finding:
Using layman terms, the also paper compared the difference between spaced out learning and massing, which is learning that is not spaced out or which is crammed together.

The results that they found were contrary to how we were taught by the system.
(Disclaimer: I am not taking a dig at the system here. The paper acknowledges that many textbooks and traditional education systems make this mistake too!)
They found that the longer you retain what you have learnt, the larger the duration in which learning is spaced out. So, if retention is increased from 10 days to 6 months, the optimal space between learning increases from 1 day to about 1 month respectively!
Thus longer spaces between learning would lead to longer retention of knowledge.

That being translated to less scientific language means that teachers should not present their children with a list of new spelling words each week but rather distribute the material sporadically across many months, and test it cumulatively at the end.

So technically, while the adrenalin boosts of last minute cramming stimulates better concentration, it also leads to less retention of knowledge in the long run and a higher probability of going to the exam hall thinking, (see below)



so maybe its time to change my study techniques! (although when youre in NUS its only going to be possible to space out your learning if you have 72 hours in a day.)

Reference:
Rohrer, D., & Pashler, H. (2007). Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 183-186.