Category: Memory

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Using Elaboration as a Cognitive Approach for Helpful Studying

By Emma Sandlin

It is quite difficult to start college. There are several issues that must be resolved, the most important of which being how to comprehend and absorb the content in the best possible way. One of the many worries that accompany beginning college is learning how to use elaboration when studying new material. According to cognitive psychologists, elaboration is a very useful technique for enhancing learning and memory retention (1). Elaboration is the process of bringing new information to life by connecting it to what has already been learned or by creating meaningful connections. Students can improve their comprehension and retain more information by using the elaborative encoding method. Study skills mastery is essential to achieving academic brilliance. Elaboration is shown to be an effective tactic for boosting understanding, fortifying memory retention, and encouraging in-depth learning (1). Elaboration makes study sessions more lively by enticing students to actively interact with the content, draw connections, and develop ideas (2). Students that integrate elaborative processing into their study regimens open the door to an abundance of knowledge that is just waiting to be discovered and comprend (3).

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Studying Blows!! Try Chunking it!

By Macey Whisker

As a college student, you will be doing a LOT of studying! Twelve to sixteen credit hours a semester is an intense workload, so let’s make it a bit lighter. Throw your previous study tools out the window, this is not high school anymore! If you are anything like me, your parents or guardians probably had you remember their phone number so you could contact them from anywhere, anytime, if there was an emergency. Some parents added a little tune or jingle to the memorization process to make it easier to recall, and some assigned the chunked numbers a specific value or meaning, which is what chunking is (1)! Splitting up a specific group or list of information into chunks then assigning those chunks a title or value makes the details not just easier to remember, but able to be retained for longer periods of time!

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Studying is a Waste of Time: There’s a Better Way to Get the Grade You Want

By Brody Forsythe

The transformation of becoming a college freshman from a high school senior is a different transition for everyone. Depending on the individual’s experience, goals and interests, it can either be a seamless transition or one with many holes and lots of exposed seams. When it comes to academics, it can be an extremely difficult transition if one is trying to incorporate old study habits that were previously effective in high school. There are numerous students out there that will tell you about their humbling experience with their very first college exam, and I can include myself in that category. I can remember studying for my first chemistry exam thinking about how easy it was going to be to get an “A” on it, and when it came down to taking the test, not a single concept could be retrieved from my mind to help me pass the test. All I could remember was how confident I felt looking over the notes I previously written down, and looking at the practice problems we did in class months prior to the exam and thinking, “Yeah, I’ve got this!”. I was just following my old high school studying procedure and little did I know my whole world about studying was in for a rude awakening.

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How Thinking About Yourself Can Help You Learn Better

By Madeline Baldwin

In college, you’re always learning and absorbing new information. It’s a time when you have the opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills. The ability to accurately recall and engage with information is the key to success in the whirlwind of college life. Studying can feel super overwhelming sometimes, but one strategy to increase the effectiveness of studying is something called the self-reference effect, or the SRE. 

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Unlock the Secret Clue: Narrative Rehearsal Hypothesis

By Makayla Behm

Starting College

Starting college is extremely hard. There are many things that you have to worry about but most importantly how to study and learn the information effectively. When starting out in college there are so many things that you have to worry about but learning how to rehearse the information you are getting should not be on one of your worry lists. 

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Frustration? No More!

By Reece Putrich

When studying for an exam, do you try hard to remember everything? Then when you get the exam, you go mind blank and forget it all? Well, this is because you may have shallow processing. Shallow processing happens when you choose to only try and remember the physical features of an object or task. (1) This may happen when you are in a science class and must remember a diagram. While you may be having to memorize the diagram, you may possibly only try to remember the pictures and features you can see. On the other hand, if you were trying to pay close attention to the words or definitions this would then be called deep processing. (1) Deep processing allows our brain to hold more memories and allows our minds to remember information better. You are probably wondering where shallow processing and deep processing come from.

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Memory Consolidation, a Helpful Study Tool

By Frannie Heckman

Memories are a huge factor in learning, studying, and just your everyday life as student. Learning the processes of memories and how certain memories become short-term and some become long-term, where they are in your brain, and learning how sleep can affect you, can actually be a benefit for studying and your future GPA. While studying many students just take in as much information as possible in a short amount of time this is not always the best method. Consolidation process of memories is transforming them into a more stable, longer- lasting form. (1) This can also be helpful to students to get the information they need while having it last longer in the process.

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Interleaving: Improving Memory and Recall

By Hunter Hall

Learning and retaining information for many people within today’s school system is a struggle. Information can become skewed, easy to forget, mixed around and confused with other topics learned along with the information you’re trying to retain. There are many techniques or tips and tricks one can use to become more efficient in storing information in their mind and keeping it there. One of these techniques is interleaving. Interleaving is a technique used for retaining information at a higher rate in both short term and long term memory. The process of interleaving involves mixing around questions or terms from different topics while studying or learning new material. However, there is an argument against the effectiveness of interleaving. As Doug Rohrer, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, states in his article about interleaving, the argument is that some believe it can lead to an individual confusing certain information with one another (1). The example given was the words “illusion” and “allusion” (1). Despite this, research held on interleaving has shown that it does indeed improve recall. 

Buff Doge vs. Cheems Meme | Students Who Use The; Students Who Use The; Interleave Method; Block Method | image tagged in memes,buff doge vs cheems | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
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To Cram, or Not to Cram

By Jenna Kinney

Have you ever found yourself the night before a huge exam cramming in hours of studying when you could have started days ago? Or have you spread your studying out when preparing for a huge exam? I would guess that most people would agree with the first question even myself would agree with ending up in that situation before a huge exam. But which method is more effective to receive the greatest outcome from the exam that you are preparing for? First is to know these are both cognitive processes the first one being massed practice and the second one being distributed practice. Distributed practice is establishing a time to practice and engage with the material you are studying, and you do this over many different times not just once. Massed practice is when the material you are studying is done repeatedly within a short period of time, and is only done once (6). Now the big question is which one is better?

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