Hi, I'm Michael Corayer and this is Psych
Exam Review. In this video and the next
few videos, I'd like to look at how we
can use research on memory to improve
our memory and improve our ability to
recall information. One of the first
things that we'll look at I talked about
previously, this is the idea that
organization is important for memory. I
talked about organizational encoding, we
saw this idea that if you were trying to
remember a list of numbers, for instance,
it'll be easier to remember if you could
break those numbers up into chunks.
This is the type of organization known
as chunking but the idea here is that
any time you want to recall something
you want to have an organization to the
information. You want to have a structure.
We don't really learn well when it comes
to just random isolated facts but if we
have a structure to that information
it's bit easier for us to learn it. Now
the next thing, I want to return to some
ideas from Hermann Ebbinghaus I talked
about in a previous video. The thing
that we looked at for Ebbinghaus was the
idea of the forgetting curve and this is
the idea that Ebbinghaus tested himself
using these random syllables, he tried to
remember lists of them and he found that
his recall was really good immediately
after he studied a list but it dropped
very quickly and then it sort of leveled
off. The idea of the forgetting curve
is that each time you review the
information you're sort of raising that
curve back up. You're starting here again
and it gradually falls over time and it
levels off but you'll know a little bit
more than you did before and then, you
know, if you study again eventually the
idea is if you study it enough times you
end up with this sort of high flat
version of the curve where you recall a
lot of the information for a long period
of time. That's really ideally what
you want when you're studying for a
class. You don't want to just know it for
an hour, hopefully you want to know the
information long-term and we can see
from this forgetting curve that the way
to do that is to review repeatedly and
this is called distributed practice or
distributed review.
This is going to be more effective
at remembering information long-term
compared to what we want to avoid which
is known as massed practice. This is like
cramming. So massed practice is what
you want to avoid. It's trying
to study everything all at once because
if we look at this forgetting curve, you
know, no matter how much, even if your
recall is close to a hundred
percent right after you're studying
something, it's going to drop very
quickly. The only way to prevent that
from happening is to review that
information over and over and over again
until you have this nice high flat
version of the curve. Now I want to talk
about another thing that Ebbinghaus
looked into in his study of these
nonsense syllables. What he did was he
took two consonants and then he put a
vowel in between them so he'd end up
with words like you know dut or fip.
So we have these nonsense
syllables and he tried remember long
lists of them and what he found when you
look at these lists of words is that his
recall was good for the first few words
on the list and then it dropped. He was
most likely to forget the ones in the
middle and then the ones near the end of
the list his recall improved. This
is known as the serial position effect.
This is the idea that the position of
the information on the list actually
influences recall and it's easier to
remember things at the beginning of the
list and at the end of the list. So this
serial position effect, there's really
two effects here. The first one is
called primacy, so that's referring to
the idea that we remember things at the
beginning of a list better and then the
things at the end of the list, this
effect is referred to as recency. OK, so
what does this have to do with our study
habits? Well, again if we return to this
idea of distributed review we can see
another benefit, the other benefit, comes
from this serial position effect. So you
can imagine that if you were to study
for, you know, let's say this is a two
hour cram session here. Well,
you're going to have the primacy effect
here and you're going to have
the recency effect here and then you can
have all this information in the middle
that you're more likely to forget. Now if
we take that same two hour period but we
break it up into a number of shorter
study sessions
not only do we get this distributed
review, we're reviewing the information
many times over, but we also have this
additional primacy and recency effect at
the beginning and end of each of these
little sessions. This means we have less
information that's sort of sitting in
the middle, this area where recall is
probably going to be the lowest, and we
have more of these beginnings and
endings and those are hopefully going to
improve our recall of the information.
Now another way that you can use this
serial position effect is remember to
mix up the information. So you want to
break things into groups, into
short sessions with lots of breaks but
you also want to mix things up and what
I mean by that is you don't want the
same information always being in the
middle of your study session. If you
always, you know, start, if you just reread
the chapter over and over again
you're gonna probably know the beginning
of the chapter pretty well and the end of
the chapter well and all the stuff in
the middle is going to be lost. But if
you mix that up and sometimes you start
your reading in the middle of the
chapter, just flip to a random part of
the chapter and start reading, now
that's at the beginning of the session
instead of always being in the middle.
This part of the reason why flash cards
are a pretty effective strategy is that
you can shuffle the cards up so each
time you go through your
flashcards hopefully they're in a
different order and so different
information is going to be first and
different information is going to be at
the end and the things in the middle are
going to change and that's hopefully
going to help you get this serial
position effect where the information is
sometimes at the beginning or the end of
a list rather than always being in the
middle. Ok, now the hardest part about
applying this strategy is that when you
take lots of breaks you have to remember
to actually get back to studying after.
That's probably the biggest downfall for
a lot of students. They say okay "I'm
gonna study and then in 15 minutes
I'm gonna take a break" and then that
break that's supposed to be five minutes
ends up, you know, half an hour later
they're still reading things on Facebook
and they realize "oh yeah I should
probably get back to studying". So when you
apply this, you want to try to have a
system and then structure to your time
managemen. That will sort of force you
to get back to studying. Okay, so let's
look at another way that you can improve
your studying and this one you might not
like to hear. This is the idea that
tests are actually a good thing
and this is referred to as the testing
effect. The idea here is that testing
yourself on the material will actually
help you to recall it better than simply
reviewing. So the testing effect is that
testing is more effective than reviewing.
So you're better off testing yourself on
a chapter rather than just rereading it.
Ok, so why is this? Well, part of the
reason is that there's a difference
between recall and recognition.
Recognition is much easier so if you
look at some term from the chapter when
you read the definition, there's a
tendency to be like "yeah I knew that"
right? Like I recognize that that's the
definition of that term versus if I
asked you to define the term right now
we're looking at recall. This is much
harder to do. For instance if we
look at some information that I've
talked about recently, the seven sins of
memory, now if you look at a list of this
you know Daniel Schacter's "seven sins of
memory" you'll probably recognize all of
them because if you've been watching these
earlier videos you're familiar with them.
So you look at them "oh yeah I
recognize all of those" and you feel kind
of like you know them. But that's very
different than if I said what are the
seven sins? Write them down, come
up with the list. That's going to be a
lot harder but if you do that, if you
force yourself to try to recall the
information, you're going to remember it
better. And also, a part of this
recognition, this relates to a bias that
I think I've mentioned in a previous
video, oops, and this is called
hindsight bias. All right, this is the
idea that we think we knew something all
along, right? Something happens we say "oh
yeah I I knew that was going to happen".
Well that can happen with this sort of
recognition where you look at a term and
its definition you say "oh yeah I knew
that" like "I'm good on that information"
when in fact if you were forced to try
to recall it you probably didn't know. So
test yourself frequently. And this
doesn't have to be by yourself.
One of the best ways to do this is to
study with a friend and test each other.
So you can ask them, "explain this
experiment to me" or "can you tell me why
this, why does this study matter? What was
the purpose of that?" or "can you tell me
the Schacter seven sins of
memory?".
And if you force each other to try to come up
with the information, what you'll
find is if you're explaining to each
other and you're testing each other
you'll probably have a much more
effective review session. It's also a
little bit more interesting than simply
re-reading the chapter over and over
which will bore you to tears. Alright so
that's the testing effect and you want
to try to apply that in your study as
well. The last thing that we want to
look at you probably also don't want to hear
but it's true. This the idea that
when you think you know something and
you've learned it well, don't stop there.
This is also something that Ebbinghaus
found with his lists of nonsense
syllables, that if he studied the list
that he thought he already knew he
actually got better at it and he was
able to remember it even longer. This
is referred to as overlearning. The idea
of overlearning if you want to review
the information even after you know it
and this will extend how long you
can remember it. It will improve your recall
of this information. So don't stop
when you think you know it. You want to
continue to study after you know it,
continue to study known material. Now in
my own case I certainly experienced this
because I've overlearned a lot of
introductory psychology knowledge.
I've read books and I've taken
classes but then when I was teaching, of
course I had to cover information that I
already knew but I was covering it again
that meant I was reading about it again,
I was talking about, answering
questions from students, I was
tutoring people in this knowledge and as
a result I have a really firm grasp of
this information. Now you might think
this seems like a lot of work to overlearn
You know, "I only have so much
time to study and why should I spend
that time studying stuff that I already
know", right? It might seem like it's
inefficient that way but it actually is
more efficient and what I mean by that
is it allows you to learn new material
more quickly. For instance in my own
case, I have, I think, a pretty good grasp
of introductory psychology knowledge and
if I learn something new about
psychology I sort of already have this
firm network to attach that information
to. Whereas if you only study something
enough to know it for a little while and
then two weeks later or a month later
you've forgotten it, now when you learn
something new it's like you're starting
all over.
You don't have anything to connect it to.
When you have a really firm base
and you've overlearned that initial
material, now you learn something new and
you can connect it to the things you
already know and you can actually learn
the new information faster. So it seems
like a lot of work at the beginning but
in the long term it allows you to learn
new information faster and so that's why
you should try to engage in this overlearning.
Review the chapters that you
already know, review the material
that you think "I don't need to study
this for the test because I already know
it". Review it anyway and it will actually
make the information that you're not so
sure on easier to recall later. Ok, in
the next video we'll look at a little
more detail on this idea and we'll see
how our memories are sort of connected
in networks and how we can use that to
improve our recall. I hope you found this
helpful, if so, please like the video and
subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks
for watching!