Studying to Learn Taking Psychology With You Chapter 10. Memory Wade and Tavris (2006)

General guidelines for studying to learn are summarized below from Wade and Tavris (2006) Chapter 10. Memory.

Pay attention! It seems obvious, but often we fail to remember because we never encoded the information in the first place. To make their point, the authors show nine different Lincoln penny's and ask which one is the real Lincoln penny. Most Americans have trouble recognizing the real penny because they have never attended to the details of a penny's design (Nickerson & Adams, 1979). The point is that when you do have something to remember, such as the material in our textbook, you will do well if you encode (pp. 366-367) it well.

Encode information in more than one way. The more elaborate the encoding of information, the more memorable it will be. Use your imagination! For instance, in addition to remembering a telephone number by the sound of the individual digits, you might note the spatial pattern they make as you punch them in on the telephone.

Add meaning. The more meaningful the material, the more likely it is to link up with information already in long-term memory. Meaningfulness also reduces the number of chunks of information you have to learn. Common ways of adding meaning include making up a story about the material (fitting the material into your own cognitive schema [p. 306]), thinking of examples, and forming visual images. (Some people find that the odder the image, the better.) If your license plate happens to be 236MPL, you might think of 236 maples. If you are trying to remember the concept of procedural memory (p. 361), you might make the concept meaningful by thinking of an example from your own life, such as your ability to ride a mountain bike, and then imagine a "P" superimposed on an image of yourself on your bike.

Take your time. Leisurely learning, spread out over several sessions usually produces better results than harried cramming (although reviewing material just before a test can be helpful). In terms of hours spent, "distributed" (spaced) learning sessions are more efficient than "massed" ones; in other words, three separate one-hour study sessions may result in more retention than one session of three hours.

Take time out. If possible, minimize interference by using study breaks for rest or recreation. Sleep is the ultimate way to reduce interference. Sleep is the ultimate way to reduce interference. In a classic study, students who slept for eight hours after learning lists of nonsense syllables retained them better than students who went about their usual business (Jenkins & Dallenbach, 1924). Sleep is not always possible, of course, but periodic mental relaxation usually is.

Overlearn. You can't remember something you never learned well in the first place. Overlearning--studying information even after you think you know it--is one of the best ways to ensure that you'll remember it.

Monitor your learning. Test yourself frequently, rehearse thoroughly, and review periodically to see how you are doing. Don't evaluate your learning immediately after reading the material, though; because the information is still in short-term memory (pp. 355-359), you are likely to feel a false sense of confidence about your ability to recall it later. If you delay making a judgment for at least a few minutes, your evaluation will probably be more accurate (Nelson & Dunlosky, 1991).

Whatever strategies you use, you will find that active learning produces more comprehension and better retention than does passive reading or listening. The mind does not gobble up information automatically; you must make the material digestible. Even then, you should not expect to remember everything you read or hear. Nor should you want to. Piling up facts without distinguishing the important from the trivial is just confusing. Popular books and tapes that promise a "perfect," "photographic" memory, or "instant recall" of everything you learn, fly in the face of what psychologists know about how the mind operates. Our advice: Forget them.