![]() The participants were significantly better at identifying the artists' whose paintings they had studied in an "interwoven" style than the artists whose paintings they'd studied in blocks. ![]() At the end of the experiment, the participants did a distracting task (counting backward by threes from 547), and then had to identify which artist had painted a new painting. For the other half of the artists, they saw the paintings in a mixed-up order. For half of the artists, the participants saw all six paintings in a row. In one study, published in Psychological Science in 2008, Kornell and University of California, Los Angeles psychologist Robert Bjork, PhD, asked 120 participants to learn the painting styles of 12 artists by looking at six examples of each artist's work. But research shows that mixing tasks and topics is a better bet. You might think that if you want to learn one thing well, the best thing to do would be to sit down and concentrate on it for as long as you can stand. Students don't realize that they're really undercutting their own learning." Interweave Your Subjects "But the problem is that it's horrible for long-term retention. "They cram right before an exam, and to be honest that's probably OK for doing fine on your exam," she says. When it comes to spacing, students are often led astray by their own experiences, says Kent State University psychology professor Katherine Rawson, PhD, who also studies learning. On a test the next day, the students in the "big stack" group remembered significantly more of the words than the students in the "four small stacks" group - 49 percent as compared with 36 percent. So, the students who used the one big stack had a longer spacing time between each of the four times they saw a word. The other half of the students studied the words in four smaller stacks of five cards each. But half of the students studied the words in one big stack - they went through all 20 words, then started over. ![]() The students all studied each word four times. He asked college students to study a "stack" of 20 digital vocabulary flashcards. In one study, published in 2009 in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Kornell showed that the spacing effect works on a smaller time scale as well. That process - forgetting and retrieval - helps cement the new knowledge in place. Then, when they come back to the material later, the new study session jogs their memory and they recall what they learned the first time around. However, one possible cause is that, over time, people forget what they learned in their initial study session. Researchers aren't exactly sure why spacing is so effective. Practically speaking, too much spacing is not really a danger anyone should worry about." "However, most of us space far too little. "At some point, waiting too long could have a negative effect ," Kornell says. In other words, if you have 12 hours to spend on a subject, it's better to study it for three hours each week for four weeks than to cram all 12 hours into week four.Īnd for the most part, the more time you take between study sessions, the better off you are - at least within the time limits of an academic semester. But while last-minute cramming may allow you to pass a test, you won't remember the material for long, according to Williams College psychologist Nate Kornell, PhD.ĭecades of research have demonstrated that spacing out study sessions over a longer period of time improves long-term memory. Space Your Study SessionsĪs course reading piles up, it can be tempting to let yourself fall behind, all the while reassuring yourself that you'll spend two days cramming right before an exam. We've rounded up three principles, drawn from decades of cognitive psychology research, to help you get the most out of your studying hours. And some habits that you might suspect aren't so great, like last-minute cramming for exams, may be even worse than you thought. ![]() Research has shown that some "common sense" study techniques - such as always reading in the same quiet location, or spending hours at a time concentrating on one subject - don't promote long-term learning. And there's a good chance that you have your study routine set, whether it's a cup of tea and your textbooks in bed, or a quiet library carrel you've claimed as your own.īut it may be that the study habits you've honed for a decade or two aren't serving you as well as you think they are. You've successfully turned in homework assignments and passed exams for at least 16 years. You probably think you know how to study.Īfter all, you've made it to graduate school.
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