If you have already studied the notes at least once before, you are in effect telling your brain: “I’ve seen this before, there is no need to make any further effort”. For instance, when someone says France, you may visualize the French flag, the Eiffel tower, French wine, cheese, etc. If you are struggling to remember an important concept during your exam, you need to activate as many connected cues as possible.

When the 5 facts about island A were retrieved from memory, their connection with the context cue was strengthened and the connection of the remaining 5 facts with the context cue was weakened (see “Testing effect”). Fun, easy, packed with entertaining activities and illustrations, this is the memory improvement book for you. As a consequence, students who take notes on a computer underperform in tests compared to students using handwriting.

In the study above, the testing group took increasingly elaborate notes as the sessions progressed compared to the other groups (without being consciously aware of it). For practical reasons, it is probably best to use a specialized software that uses a spacing algorithm.

If you are on medications such as Ritalin, it is therefore a good idea to keep the same dose during both revision and testing. The author does a great job of reviewing the history of memory, both how it has been conceptualized and studied differently over time. For instance, if you are memorizing the members of a particular animal/plant family, then try to find all possible relations between the members.

From ancient philosophers to Freud, 'The Complete Guide to Memory' breaks down nuggets of theoretical and scientific study into bite-sized synopses with real-life examples for application. If we pair the same cues with multiple memory traces then it will be difficult to retrieve one particular trace because once the cue is activated, the activation will spread to all paired memory traces at once and these will compete for entry to consciousness. Studies have shown that students who revise in many different rooms prior to their test perform better than those who study in one room only (with a 30% improvement in test performance) [ 17]. Experimentally, it’s very difficult to tell these two apart, but since they are separate processes, we’ll consider each separately as we look at how memory works.

A comprehensive guide to understanding how memory works, how memory forms, the mind-body connection, and more! Talking with your colleagues, discussing a point at a meeting and planning your weekend would be entirely impossible without WM. Successful retrieval of the memory trace then depends to some degree on the re-activation of the context in which it was encoded.Giving meaning to information is beneficial as it harnesses the process of spreading activation (which we’ll cover in the section on “Spreading activation”). g. how easy/difficult/interesting the material is or how well it was encoded), it approximates an exponential curve, with rapid forgetting in the beginning and less forgetting in later periods of time. For instance, it may be better to have three 1-hour sessions per week for your engineering class than six 30-minute sessions. How can I remember such an inconsequential and innocuous experience when over four decades later, often I can’t remember what I had for dinner the previous evening? Each study session that is followed by immediate or delayed sleep provides another opportunity to consolidate the studied material (we cover consolidation processes above).