Active recall Flashcards
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The first man to contact studies on forgetting and retention
How much information is forgotten in the span of 9 hours?
about 60% of the information learnt
Spaced practice
Hermann Ebbinghaus also discovered that one may beat the forgetting curve by spacing out rehearsal time (one may also forget if the information learnt is not reviewed)
Spaced repetition
the act of learning material then rehearsing it increasingly in a repeated amount of time.
How much information can one retain?
The ( 7+2/7-2) method. George Miller discovered after carrying out an experiment, that on average a person can recall between 5 and 9 numbers, but on average 7 digits.
Rajveer Meena
A man from India that was able to memorize the pi upto 70,000. decimal places
Anders Ericson
Was a swedish psychologist who carried out studies on performance. He discovered that talents are not innate abilities, but success could be achieved by putting a lot of work and effort.
What are the ordinary limit of the human mind?
Anders Ericson and Steve Faloon carried out a study to discover how many numbers steve could recall after repeatedly rehearsing the digits. In the span of a year and a half, he could recall 82 digits.
Deliberate practice
Anders Ericson came up with the term “deliberate and purposeful practice”
Elements of deliberate practice
- Purposeful practice has well-defined- specific goals
- Purposeful practice is focused
- Purposeful practice involves feedback
- Purposeful practice involves getting out of your comfort zone.
Purposeful practice involves feedback
This means that working on small elements of a piece of work is more effective than working on the whole piece all at once.
Purposeful practice involves getting out of your comfort zone
Only focusing on the specific part of a task
Purposeful practice has well-defined- specific goals
getting feedback which means that the work you’re doing does not have to be perfect
Purposeful practice is focused
Trying something that you have not attempted keeping in mind that there’s the possibility of failing
Is active recall limited to age?
Memory can be improved and the trick is to pay attention. This was proved by a 44 year old woman who was able to improve her memory in a span of three months.
What are the strategies of beating the forgetting curve?:
- Active recall
- Repeated recall/retesting
- Spaced retention
Flashcards
a study method (either on paper on on a device) that force someone to active recall
Active recall
It is considered the best way to retain information.
It i the act of trying to remember learnt information without referring back to books or notes.
Active recall signals the brain that the information learnt is worth remembering.
Repeated recall/ retesting
include the 3+3 rule. One is more likely to forget something. if they only study ones.
In order to recall information, one should be able to recite the information they’ve learnt at least three times
Spaced retention
This is the act of spacing out active recall retests for extended periods of time.
study shows that self-practice tests that have longer spaced out periods are more effective than those done all at once.
How is space retention beneficial to bees?
In a certain study, bees were trained to recognise sugar. Bees that had been trained after 10 minutes performed better than those that were trained after every 30 seconds.
How is spaced retention beneficial to the brain?
When one practices spaced retention, the parts of the brain responsible for retention of information is activated more.
What are the strategies of practicing active recall?
- Making flashcards
- Quizlet
- Practice tests
- Practicing active recall with friends.
- Practice problems
Paper or digital flashcards?
Research found that paper flash cards were more effective, but phone flashcards were also as effective, because they were available at any place/time.
Laptop/desktop flashcards were not as effective.
Practice problems
one is more likely to remember solutions to their problems if they practice everyday, rather than doing a large chunk all at once.
Why is deliberate practice important?
Skill development is only achieved through a tremendous amount of practice
When is the best time to schedule one’s recall?
It is effective to schedule one’s active recall immediately after the class. One may set up reading blocks (as low as 15 minutes) in that day, and practice the “3+3 rule” a week before exams.
