Cognition in Class – Page 2 – Cognitive Psychology in Education

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Way of studying; Relating words to survival value

By: Joshua Stanley

Studying for classes or a test can be stressful at times, and prevent you from fully understanding the full material. Even when you prepare for a big exam you may not remember everything you studied and that can lead to an unwanted grade. A way to make your studying easier is by relating words or information to survival value. Doing this will make studying more effective because it taps into how human memory naturally works.

Our brains are wired to prioritise information that seems important for survival, so when something feels relevant to staying alive or solving real-life problems, the brain processes it more deeply and remembers it better. For example, instead of trying to memorize vocabulary or facts you can ask yourself how that information might help you in a real life situation, that way the information comes easier to remember because you related it to a real world experience. Say you were studying biology terms, you should think about how knowing them could help you identify or understand an illness.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Why Studying Feels So Hard (And What Your Brain Actually Wants You to Do Instead)

By: Connor Scott

If I could go back and give my freshman-self one piece of advice, it wouldn’t be “study more.”

It would be: you’re studying wrong.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Why Your Brain Loves Words and Pictures: Dual Coding Theory

By Cierra Crady

Introduction

As you can see, we see pictures with words and pictures 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 times a year. We visualize what we see and/or imagine. For example, if we see words and can imagine what we read in a book or magazine, this is called the Dual Coding Theory.

How that works is that we have two brain systems:

Verbal System – Words, language, and/or written or spoken information
Non-verbal System – Images, mental pictures, and sensory pictures

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

The Study Hack You Need: Chunking

By: Cole Smith

When I was in High School, I found myself studying for tests the night before and cramming all the material into one night study sessions. Once I got into college, I realized my prior study habits would not get me far , given how challenging the courses can be. Little did I know that the key to studying was actually something I had been doing since I was 6 years old! When you were a kid, did the story of your parents making you memorize their phone number or a street address by learning each part sound familiar? If it does, well then, you are already familiar with the concept of chunking! Splitting up the numbers in your parents’ phone number and memorizing each section, or by splitting up your street address and memorizing the number, street, and zip code separately, and then putting it all together, is a prime example of how chunking information works (1)!

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

You Think You Understand… But Your Brain Is Guessing: How Top-Down Processing Affects Studying

By: Kayleigh Zerrusen

Introduction

If you were to ask me to travel back to my first semester of college, I would give myself the advice to find a better way to study instead of just looking over notes that I copied and pasted from class. Most students will find themselves spending hours on end looking over notes and reading through textbooks. This tends to lead them to feel unprepared during exams and tests. Students think that this is caused from a lack of effort, but it could be the way your brain is processing information. An important idea from cognitive psychology that explains this issue is top-down processing. This process shows how knowledge that you have been taught previously and other experiences shape the way we comprehend and understand new information. Although top-down processing can be useful, there is also a possibility it can lead to misunderstanding when we study if it is not used the correct way.

F.1. Although the image is not moving, viewers often perceive spinning motions, showing how the brain uses top-down processing to understand visual information.

April 26, 2026April 28, 2026

Understanding Versus Memorizing; Why Elaboration Is Better

By: Courtney Hart

Have you ever crammed for a test and immediately forgot what it is you learned afterwards. This is something I struggled with when first getting into college. I would study right before a test or some important assignment. I would get the topic down for the short period of time that I needed it but then when I try to recall it after a longer period. It was hard for me to remember, I used to blame my memory being bad, but I have come to realize it is just the way I was studying that was the problem. Well, that is because I was not trying to understand the information but just memorize it. One of the better ways to study is to understand. And that is exactly what the purpose of elaboration is. Elaboration is a technique that I learned that has helped me study and succeed within the learning environment.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Not You Getting Distracted Again…

By: Mason Johnson

Introduction

You know those days where you tell yourself you’re going to be super productive, get all your work done, and finally stay focused… and then somehow you end up doing literally anything else? Yeah, same.

You sit down, open your laptop, maybe even have a snack ready, and within minutes, you’re checking your phone and giggling at random videos you didn’t even mean to tap on. Being a first-year college student is already a big adjustment, and trying to stay focused on top of that can feel impossible.

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026

Why You Suck at Studying… And How to Fix It: The Hidden Problem of Cognitive Interference

By: Nate Talkad

You know that feeling when you’ve been studying for hours and hours the night before your exam, and you’re feeling prepared, and then you show up and think to yourself, “I have never seen any of this in my life”? It can be quite frustrating, confusing, and frankly a little demoralizing. But here’s the thing: your brain isn’t full of cobwebs, it’s just a little confused due to something called cognitive interference. A sneaky, everyday memory blunder that affects not just college students, but every single human without them even realizing it.

Cognitive interference happens when different memories compete with each other. Think of it like trying to listen to two people talking to you at the same time. You may catch some words from one person and some from another, and by the end of it, you’re left confused and not knowing what either of them were talking about. The same thing happens in your mind when old and new information overlap.

Understanding this phenomenon can completely change the way you study and scrape through your classes. let’s dig into what interference is, how it shows up in real life, and what the research says you can do to fix it.

April 25, 2026April 27, 2026

Retrieval Practice: Learning that Lasts

By: Joshua Frenden

Introduction

Got a big test coming up? Need to learn something that you’ll be able to remember long term? Retrieval practice might become your new best friend. “Practicing retrieval yields significantly greater long-term retention of the studied materials than just restudying them” (Moreira et al., 2026). This method of retrieval is something that many, including myself, have found to be a very “effective… learning strategy” (Moreira et al., 2026). With the goal of “familiarity and recollection” in mind, retrieval practice might be the study method that you have been missing out on.

April 28, 2025April 28, 2025

“Why I Forgot Stuff During the Test After Studying Really Hard”

By Walter Medrano

Have you ever studied really hard for a test, but when you sit down to take it, your mind just blanks out and you notice that you’re not as confident as you were while studying? That’s happened to me more than once. I’d study in my dorm, feel super confident, and then get to the classroom and suddenly forget everything. I used to think it was just nerves or stress, but it turns out there’s actually a reason this happens, and it’s called the encoding specificity principle. It may sound scary at first but it’s actually pretty cool once you understand it.