How to Improve Your Learning Process
If you’re currently trying to master a new language, study for an exam, or educate yourself on a new topic, you’ll know all about the challenges of learning and recall. New learnings often seem to leave your brain as quickly as they enter, and even with repeat study, some specific bits of information never seem to come to you when you need them.
Past research has uncovered several important principles that make learning more effective. For example, even centuries ago, philosophers and psychologists understood that the “testing effect” helps to solidify information in memory. When you’re learning new information, you should practice retrieval of that information, not just restudy of it. If you repeatedly expose yourself to a fact, you generally won’t recall it as effectively as if you test your ability to spontaneously retrieve it from memory too.
Another important learning principle is that you should space out your study periods rather than blocking them together into a single intense period of learning. This can help with consolidating new neural connections and allowing you to practice partially forgetting and retrieving new information over time.
A new study supports a third principle that goes hand in hand with these two concepts of retrieval and spacing. This article will highlight what that research shows.
