Category: Memory

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Combination or Consolidation?

By Peyton Grantham

Imagine yourself sitting in math class learning the Pythagorean Theorem. You might have spent hours upon hours studying and using the theorem to understand it. Doing this may have exercised your brain so much that you still remember the formula in your long term memory. This is what memory consolidation is for. 

What are Memories?

Memory is defined as retrieving information, storing said information, and then remembering it at a later time (1).  Memory involves various parts of the brain, but the hippocampus is a big part of that. The hippocampus is situated between the brain’s temporal lobes and takes a huge role in memory and emotions. When we take in information, the data goes through the brain using neurons, synapses, and neurotransmitters. The neurons communicate with one another through electrical and chemical currents and the synapses are a small space on a neuron that allows information to be passed on to other neurons, through this process neurotransmitters help by TRANSMITTING chemical signals that move the data along into storage. Through these chemical signals, memory is created. Memory consolidation causes short term memories to be stored as long term memories. 

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Work Smart. Not Hard

By Randilyn Light-Smith

We all stress about having a big final, quiz, or even a test coming up. This could have even started at a young age of stressing about one coming up. Coming up with many ways on how to prepare and study for one of these was always a big help. One of the main ways was repeating something over and over again. This can be done by saying it out loud or rereading the material you were given over and over again. Why is doing something over and over again a big way that helps you remember the material you learned?

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Let’s Learn Some Vocab

By Olivia Falls

If you have ever taken any anatomy, psychology, or physics classes, you know the importance of learning and memorizing vocabulary words. Now I know that there are other classes that you can think of where vocabulary was also important, but in my opinion, these were the biggest ones. In these three classes every vocabulary word was important and came back up later in the class. All classes have vocabulary words that you should learn for a test, but with most you can get away with doing a quick review right before the test without actually knowing the words. But, for those classes in which each vocabulary word is needed and necessary to understand the future material, a new strategy is needed. What’s the new strategy? So glad you asked! Using a technique called paired-associate learning, you will be better able to learn and recall the meanings of your vocabulary words. The technique that I am going to talk about might be one that you already use, but simply did not know what it was called. But, regardless of if you have already been using this technique or are just now learning about it, this blog will be helpful in improving your ability to recall information.

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Do You Want to Pass your Next Test?

By Haley Haggard

Have you ever failed a test before even though you studied for hours on end? Let me guess how you studied, you copied down what was on the power-point word for word and thought “well that should be enough!”. Well, you were wrong. When you are frantically trying to keep up with the professor and copying down word for word from the PowerPoint you are not processing what is being said because you are processing on a shallow level. This is where the level of processing theory comes in, it is going to help you process information at a deeper level to help you remember what is going on in class. I am going to teach you about the level of processing theory and how you can use it to your advantage when studying for your next test.

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Respect the Concept

By Braden Weaver

When it comes to school, there is always those questions that absolutely stump you, whether it be a test or a homework problem. In my almost 18 year career as a student, it has got to be one of the worst feelings to be completely blank and have no clue where to begin. My previous mindset was “well its either I know it or I don’t”. Please DO NOT try this it could result in bad grades. The better way to come up with the answer is to try and remember past lessons that have similar concepts to the problem at hand, then start breaking down that problem in order to solve it. This is where conceptual knowledge comes into play. Conceptual knowledge refers to the knowledge of, or understanding of concepts, principles, theories, models, and classifications. Now you’re probably thinking “how on earth am I going to be able to do this in a limited time?”. The process of connecting a lesson to another lesson is a lot quicker than you think. There are actually a few ways you can boost your conceptual knowledge to make you a better student guaranteed! One of the first ways is to be able to group things just by looking at them. For example, look at the picture below. Just by looking at it you can already tell what those objects are. That’s right, they’re vegetables! The second way you can better improve your concept skills is to be able to make connections between things. If I had a list of broccoli, zucchini, and celery, it would be easy to put all of them in a Venn diagram to find out differences and similarities between the three vegetables. Lastly, students like yourself can transfer the ideas that you can get from vegetables and use it to find something more important. For example, which vegetable is considered the healthiest? Just something that is a little more complex.

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Dual Coding: Two Perspectives in Learning

By Marisa Murillo

Have you ever wondered how to store information easier in your memory? I have always failed to remember things because I did not simply know how to study memorization. The fact is, I didn’t need to study memorization, but I needed to learn and comprehend the information to actually gain knowledge on certain topics. In high school, many students may not have to study for their exams or quizzes but that all changes in college. College pushes students to study in order to learn the information they will be later tested on and have to apply to their future careers. Dual coding theory is a theory that attempts to explain cognition in terms of two separate yet partly interconnected systems. The two systems can work independently of each other or they can work together in an integrated way, often applying better outcomes. These two systems include a verbal system specialized for dealing with language and a non-verbal system for representing and processing knowledge about objects and events. Dual coding has a lot to deal with the concreteness of information. The theory is known to predict the information that is being dually encoded should be remembered approximately twice as well as information likely to be singly encoded. The best study method for any student is the cued recall of information and specifically associated with this theory is the conceptual peg hypothesis. Students can create questions or simple quizzes after lectures to better learn the information through recall for a better knowledge of the information in the future.

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Chunking Through College Stress

By Rhianna Cyr

Freshman year of high school I took the introduction to agriculture class. While in this class we had to memorize the National FFA Creed written by E. M. Tiffany. This creed is made up of 5 short paragraphs describing what it means to be an FFA member and the beliefs of the program, that each member should represent. In order to help us memorize it, my teacher had me and my classmates memorize each paragraph, to recite each week. In other words, week one on Monday, we start memorizing paragraph one, then recite it on Friday. Week two, we memorized paragraph two, to recite on that next Friday, and so on, for five weeks. This process of learning, one paragraph at a time made it much easier to store the creed in long term memory. Later, in my sophomore year of college, I learned the name of this simple process. So, keep reading to find out!

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Stop Reading, Start Retrieving

By Jacob Lamprecht

Studying. Most all college students will attempt to study at some point in their college careers. Though variations exist from student to student, oftentimes the same pattern emerges in our studying. First, we find a comfy spot. Then, to continue creating that nice study environment, we put on some music. But not that song, it doesn’t fit my mood right now, so I’ll skip it. Upon finding the right mood for studying, we check our social media to see if anything has happened in the last few moments since we began studying. When we finally get to the point in our studying where we actually open our notes or textbook most follow through with the same procedure. We look at our notes. And then look at them again. Rereading and rereading and rereading to shove that knowledge into our brain. Though this approach feels fulfilling and is easy enough to do once we get past the distractions, research has shown rereading to have little effect upon our eventual test scores (1).

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Knowing Your Cognitive Limits: Taking a Study Break

By MaKennah Hollon

This is a depiction of you sitting at your desk, mind wandering, thinking about whether or not you should take a break. Hint: you probably should. Photo from my camera roll, drawn by yours truly.

If you’re anything like me when I was a freshman, you’re probably living under the age old excuse that you don’t have time for a break. That you’re too busy. That it’s a waste of time and you have things to do. These are excuses that held me back from being more productive in my studies and are probably holding you back too. It’s hard, but by prioritizing breaks, you’ll be more productive, attentive and focused on what you’re doing. Breaks can ultimately help you get more things done in a shorter amount of time so you can avoid the age old college student method of staying up all night.

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A Complete College Guide to Studying the Correct Way using the Spacing Effect

By Paige Veronda

Do you ever feel like you study for hours and hours on end yet can’t seem to retain all of the information you just looked at? Do you feel like you are overwhelmed with all of the things you need to know for classes, work, and your everyday life? If you’re a college student, I’m sure you can understand the struggle of pulling an all-nighter for a test just to fail it in the end. Or the struggles of procrastinating right before a quiz and studying 5 minutes before your class begins. Neither of these end results will give you a passing grade (unless you are really lucky). However, there is a simple solution to this problem, and it does not require you to stay up all night or study for multiple hours at a time. Here is what you need to know.