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Spacing Effect and Consolidation in Studying: Don’t you worry, you have time for that nap!

By Liz Wagner

Reality of College
College can be a scary experience for every incoming freshman, your automatically scared of the action of “failing”. College isn’t supposed to be a scary experience, it is supposed to be an enjoyable experience. You will have many opportunities that will shape you in to the grown individual you will become, you will attend parties, join clubs, and experience many firsts. But one important factor that you need to pay attention to is your study habits. If your study habits are not up to par, your grades and college experience will not end well.

Now we all know that one weakness that many college students face at some point in their college experience, and that is procrastination. Procrastination is somewhat like an evil monster that creeps up on students, especially when it comes to big papers and exams. The results of procrastinating are cramming last minute for that exam, meaning no time for that Netflix show or that nap you were counting on. What if I told you, that there are studies showing that a college student could benefit from not cramming, and you would have time for that nap.

This phenomenon in psychology is called the spacing effect, and it can benefit many college students in their studies. Many students throughout the years, typically develop their own study habits. But as you continue to read, you may discover that the spacing effect is the answer to those prays or to help you get that passing grade. The spacing effect is a pretty simple concept in psychology, the concept is spacing out your study time into multiple periods instead of one mass study session (4). During these multiple study sessions, an individual should take breaks in between each session, and the mind should be devoted to the same subject to acquire the best results (4). So that is right, multi-tasking in this phenomenon wouldn’t be a good idea. But the good news is during those short breaks in between studying you can do all the social media browsing, napping, or Netflix watching you want.
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Test Better Using the Testing Effect

By Sydney Abdnour

We’ve all heard the saying “you get out what you put in.” This statement applies perfectly to schooling, specifically studying and test taking. In high school, it is easy to cram the night before a test and get a good grade. Unfortunately, that is not the case in college. Even if you consider yourself a “good test taker,” it is important to put more time into your studies than you did in high school. There are many techniques out there to enhance the learning and studying experience for students of all ages. One of the effective ways to help students (especially college students) study and retain information better is the Testing Effect, known more commonly as the Retrieval Practice Effect.

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Stop Wasting Time Re-reading

By Emily Ellison

Welcome! Since you are reading this, I am going to assume you are a freshman in college looking to impress your teachers with your study skills for acing exams. So I have a question for you. In college, what do you believe is the most valuable thing to a student? The answer to this is time. Time is something that once it passes you cannot get it back and in college time management is a skill you will learn very quickly. College professors expect you to spend 2 hours outside of class studying for every 1 credit hour you are in class. Insane right? That was my first thought too when I got told that much time was expected of me.

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Only three steps and you’re master of elaboration!

By Hikaru Sanouchi

Elaboration: The process of developing or presenting a theory, policy, or system in further detail. (from dictionary.com)

The word elaboration is from the late Latin word, elaborationem. Labor played an important role in the word elaboration, as we can physically see the word “labor” in this word. When we imagine the word labor, we would imagine labor work, which is physically hard work people do, for instance yard work, construction, and such. Currently, elaboration means to work out a problem in more detail and depth.

That is it for elaborating on the word elaboration. Here, I’m going talk about using elaboration in psychology.  Elaboration is the process of incorporating new information with an old idea. According to Yang (1995), a goal of elaboration is to, “make learning more meaningful by forming a relationship between the new, unfamiliar material and the new the older, already learned information” (Yang. 1995. P,3). Creating a connection between your new knowledge and old knowledge to understand the information in more depth is the goal (1).

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Cuing You in on How to Study Effectively

Picture this: you’re a first year college student, fresh out of high school. All throughout high school you got by, by barely studying and maybe just glancing over your notes before an exam. You always got a decently good grade all thanks to your minimal effort. Your teachers warned you college would be significantly harder but hey, what do they know, right? You get to college and take your first quiz or exam, following the same study habits from high school and what do you know, your grade did not come back very pretty.

No college student is immune to the stress and panic of studying for quizzes and exams, and your old high school study techniques are definitely not going to cut it in this new higher level learning environment. Just skimming your notes and praying something will stick will get you nowhere and ultimately just help you do poorly instead of helping you get the grades you need. What you need is a whole new way of studying, suited for your new college self, to help you succeed academically and make college a whole lot better in general.

By: Deann Wolzen

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Music While Studying: Does It Motivate Or Distract?

By Marissa Corder

Can music help you study more efficiently? Unfortunately, this question is not easy to answer, and research has yielded contradictory evidence. The effect of music on cognitive performance depends on a multitude of factors including tempos of songs, types of cognitive tasks being performed (such as reading comprehension or solving algebra problems), and prior listening experiences. The arousal and mood hypothesis proposes that music’s influence on cognitive performance is a result of physiological responses (1). This hypothesis was developed to explain the “Mozart effect” – the popular misconception that listening to Mozart makes you smarter; that is, after Mozart-listening sessions, participants scored higher on spatial abilities compared to silent conditions or listening to instructions on relaxation (2). Later research found supporting evidence for the arousal and mood hypothesis and thus, “busted” the erroneous conclusion of a causal relationship between music and intelligence.

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Chunk Your Life Together

By Laken Barlow

Congratulations! You’re going to college! Or you may already be there, still good for you. Going and getting into college is an important milestone in many people’s lives. It prepares you for your future career. College is also a time to figure out who you are as a person and to help you grow. It can be intimidating sometimes, I’m not going to lie. You’re put in a completely new environment where you have to make new friendships and completely start over in sports and other organizations. You have to create a positive image of yourself to your peers, all the while under the pressure of doing well in your classes. The whole reason you came to college is to prepare yourself for your future, so you need to learn how to balance out your social and academic life. A key component to managing your academic work is your study habits.

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You Know What They Say About Assuming: The Likelihood Principle and Unconscious Inference

By Hannah Schultz

Have you ever taken a class in which on the first day, the professor immediately initiates actual learning? You take your seat, and all of a sudden there is a Power Point presentation on the projector and you’re supposed to be taking out your notebook. All the while, you’re wondering why there’s no entertaining ice breaker to let everyone introduce themselves. It is from this day forward, you know this is going to be a class that requires immense effort, and your professor even says, “There is a lot of material to go over, so I will start class at exactly 8 a.m. and end exactly at 9:30”.

 

We have all experienced our fair share of classes such as this, and if you haven’t yet in college, you will. However, proceed with caution because when it comes to studying for an exam, most students decide to wait until the last minute to cram as much information as possible. While going over the twelve chapters of content, you are more than likely skimming over the information and relating it to other subjects in order to remember. Due to Helmholtz’s likelihood principle, we should alter how we study. Continue reading “You Know What They Say About Assuming: The Likelihood Principle and Unconscious Inference”

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It’s Not a Generation Thing: The Generation Effect

By Sydni Neal

The Generation Effect

For individuals wishing to improve their grades on tests and quizzes, the generation effect may come in handy. The generation effect, an effective memory strategy which allows an individual to remember information better, is rather simple to take advantage of. The generation effect is simply the act of creating, or generating, information and materials that an individual needs to remember in order to enhance the process of encoding within the memory. However, according to research, the effectiveness and usefulness of the generation effect is different depending on the situation, but, as a whole, is an effect study method.

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Study Techniques: Mass V.S. Distributed Practice

By Eva Diaz

It can be a scary and exciting experience to enter college. All new experiences and people you meet can be overwhelming at some point. Student life can differ from what high school taught you. There are many things that you have to learn during your first semester school: how to write proper notes, how to follow the speed of your professor, but most importantly how to study. It may open up your mind greatly, but it could also bring many questions to life. What does this mean? What is the professor talking about? Am I doing this right? Who am I again? Although I cannot answer who you are, I can give you tips on studying for your classes as you prepare for the semester.

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