Lecture 1: How to Study Flashcards
Long-Term Learning
Improvement that lasts; visible in any context
Short-Term Performance
Immediate improvement; visible in practice context
Desirable Difficulties
Training method that introduces difficulty that makes short term performance worse but long term learning better. Ex. spaced practice, interleaving concepts, and testing rather than rereading
Simon and Bjork Key-Press Experiment
- Had two groups of people press a sequence of keys on a keyboard
- Group 1 practiced the same sequence
- Group 2 practiced three different sequences - Group 1 had less errors during practice sessions, and predicted that they would have less errors when compared to group 2
- In the retention test, group 2 had far better retention
Fowler and Barker Study
○ Group 1 reads and article, group 2 reads and highlights it, group 3 reads the highlighted article
○ No difference in number of items remembered a a week later between groups
Rothkopf Study
○ Students were given a written passage with key words missing, and were asked to fill them in
○ Group 1 had never seen the passage, group 2 read it once, group three twice, and group 4 four times
○ After 2 exposures the benefits of rereading were little to none
Peterson Study
○ Group 1 underlines and article, then reviews a marked article
○ Group 2 underlines and article then reviews a clean article
○ Group 3 has clean articles both times
○ All three groups performed the same on questions that covered basic factual material
○ Students who underlined did worse when asked inference-based questions
2 reasons highlighting isn’t very effective
○ Highlighting may cause us to focus on isolated facts and ignore bigger connections
○ Students may struggle to distinguish central ideas from peripheral information
3 Problems with rereading
○ Doesn’t improve comprehension or performance on inference-based questions
○ Rereading a second or third time doesn’t help
○ Can give students the mistakes impression that they’ve mastered the material
Recall vs Recognition
Recall is pulling things out of your memory from nothing, recognizing has a list of answers and you need to recognize the correct ones
Pressley Study
- 3 groups given the phrase “The strong man carried a shovel. The toothless man wrote a check”
- Group 1 was given no explanation, group 2 was given one, and group 3 had to generate one - Groups 1 and 2 performed the same, while group 3 performed twice as well
Blocked practice
Study one topic until you have mastered it and then move on to the next topic
Interleaved practice
Mix up problems and jump back and forth from one topic to another
Robert and Taylor Study
○ Had people do reading and practice problems based on the volumes of wedges, cones, and spheres
○ Group 1 was blocked, they did the reading for one and practice for the corresponding reading right after
○ Group 2 was interleaved, they did all of the readings, then were given interleaved practice problems
○ Group 1 had much better practice performance, but much worse test performance
Distributed practice
Spreading out your study over time with breaks
Bahrick Experiment
○ Group 1 studied 6 sessions back to back in once day
○ Group 2 studied them a day apart
○ Group 3 did so a month apart
○ During practice group 1 did best, then 2 then 3, but results were reversed when the final test was taken after 30 days
Butler Study
○ Everybody studies passages
○ Then the group is tested on half of the passage, and rereads the other half
○ The group did better on the passage that they were retested on
How to test yourself
○ Don’t just reread
○ Have a friend quiz you
○ Make flashcards
○ Use the Cornell note-taking system
Generation Effects
Refers to the long- term benefit of generating an answer, solution, or procedure versus being presented that answer, solution, or procedure.
Metacognitive Benefits of Tests
Easier to identify whether information has truly been learned or not
Putnam: Starting the Semester
○ Get organized early and establish key habits
○ Read syllabus carefully and enter due dates and extracurriculars into calendar
○ Eliminate distractions while studying
Putnam: Preparing for Each Class
○ Read before lectures, and take your time
○ Answer comprehension questions before you read the assigned chapter
○ Generate questions about the important points
○ Recall big ideas from memory and check your work
- Putnam: During Class
○ Show up to all the lectures
○ Don’t multitask
○ Take notes by hand rather than typing
○ Annotate the slides
Putnam: After Class
○ Rewrite/flesh out lecture notes
Putnam: Preparing for Tests
○ Don’t cram, study each subject a little bit each day
○ Quiz yourself instead of rereading
○ Explain things to yourself or to a friend
○ Mnemonics
