lecture 22 - improving memory 2 Flashcards
(4 cards)
Spaced practice
- A.K.A. distributed practice.
- Cramming vs spread out studying
- Which works best?
even in a five hour period distributed practice is better than cramming
with the same amount of time available spreading it our works better eg ebbinghaus
spaced practice is one of the most studied areas in the history of experimental research and learning
2009 - cornell split students into two groups - the first group studied the same material 8 times across a single day and the second group that studied the same material 8 times across 4 days. each test was 2 days after the studying was completed. the second group remembered almost 40% more of the material than the first even though they spent the same amount of time studying
why spaced practice is effective - every time you study the material you make the pathway to that material stronger and you will learn it in a slightly different way to the first time you studied it this means you are not only strengthening the pathways but you are creating more pathways
one way to do it is to keep reviewing the info with a bigger gap between reviewing it each time. time spent between the reviews should be as long as necessary for recalling the info to be difficult but not impossible
it works well with other learning techniques eg by using retrieval practice
Bude et al. (2011)
Learning of statistics. Took advantage of a curriculum
change: one group of students did this course over 8 weeks vs a different group did the course over 6 months - same amount of hours for each group the difference is the time period that the learning is spread over
results - for the 8 week course the learning is less than for the 6 month course
they also did a control and found no difference in learning - on same ptps
its not just the fact that the 6 month course students are better students it seems to be as a result of learning taking place over a longer period of time for this stats course
graphs in notes
Robust effect
mirror drawing task - when you need to draw a shape but your hand is covered and you can only see your hand in a mirror - as you get more and more practised at the task the outline of the time to trace shape gets quicker
- with massed practice there is a downward curve as they are learning
- with one minute and one day intervals they get quicker sooner and stay quicker for a longer period of time
- Cepeda et al. (2006)
reviewed 254 studies
involving more than 14,000
participants altogether. - Students recalled more after
spaced study (47%)
compared to massed study
(37%). - All studies with a retention
interval > a month showed a
clear benefit
How should learning episodes
be spaced?
- Generally longer lags are better, but depends upon how
long you want to know the material for. - Cepeda et al. (2008) performance best when the lag
between sessions is around 10-20% of the desired
retention interval. - To remember something
for a week learning
episodes should be 12-24
hrs apart. 5 years 6-12
months apart
students usually feel less confident when they space out there learning than when they are cramming and this is because spaced learning is harder and this is part of the desirable difficulties. when something is a little bit difficult it can help in the long term.
