Tag: cognitive psychology

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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. 

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Priming is not make up for the mind

By Elia Canfield

If you have ever wondered why you can remember the phone number to that J.G. Wentworth commercial, priming is the answer. Listen, this phone number on the commercial has been thrown in between the shows you watch on tv every day. During most commercial breaks between It helps that the commercial is in the form of a song. This number has been memorized by your brain without you thinking twice about it. If it is now driving you crazy that you are one of the few that cannot remember the number it is 877-cash now. It was a whole jingle that sang call J-G Wentworth 887 C-AA-SH N-OO-OW. The stimulus is the number that activates memory in your brain. This is then reinforced every time the commercial is on the TV. Your mind can then recall this information at any given time when this information invaluable or related to some topic of conversation. This can also go for you memorizing songs on the radio that you do not even like, but cannot remember what was taught in the lecture. You cannot remember because you are not exposed to it frequently enough and in many settings where you are conscious and subconsciously learning the material. Priming has also primed us to pair different beats of sound to feeling like happiness, sadness, suspense, and danger.

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The Bad Boy of Memorization: The Method of Loci!

By Jesse Boyles

Having trouble with memory loss in your studies? Definitions just not sticking in your brain like they used to or have they never been able to quite catch on? Hi, Jesse Boyles here with a new product (method) for you! It’s called the method of loci and it is here to change your study and memorization methods from a messy, cluttered headroom to a memory palace! This method is a powerful mnemonic technique that can enhance retrieval of knowledge through a specific and distinctive coding style that helps reduce proactive interference, the disruptive effect of prior learned knowledge and makes you forget more recently learned info; the things you need to succeed (1). This method is very good at helping you memorize information for a test. In addition, the method of loci is the oldest identified mnemonic strategy. Basically, the method of loci is like a folder that can store all of the information you memorized as well as information you can later recall (6). Also, that folder allows you to store an unlimited number of details in a set order. I will explain the method of loci to you in more detail shortly! With this bad boy of a technique, you can remember all kinds of things!

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Attn: Loading Too Much On? Here’s a Theory of How to Fix It

By Maya Estes

Do you ever feel like you are taking too much on? Responsibilities are piling up and you cannot for the life of you get on top of everything? You, my friend, are not the only one. At one point in time, everyone has been in your place; they have said ‘yes’ one too many times and now they have so many things on their plate that they are overwhelmed. It is not always saying yes though. Life is full of numerous distractions; it is amazing the world is still turning with the many ways you can avoid all of life’s responsibilities. There is never going to be a tried and true way of eliminating all these stressors, but there are some ways to help reduce them and focus on what is important.

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Memory Consolidation is a Great Excuse to Sleep

By Kelsey Klein

Imagine this: you’re a freshman in college who just graduated from high school. Each year of your high school career, you were able to get by with taking a quick glimpse of your notes before a quiz or exam. Even though you didn’t put much effort forth when it came to studying, you still managed to get a relatively good grades in all of your classes (shocking). Although you know that you will have tougher teachers and harder classes when you get to college, you think you will be able to get by just fine with the way you study now. When your first test rolls around and you use the same techniques as you did in high school, but you get the test back and your grade is not good, oh boy are you surprised. 

If anyone ever told you that once you get out of college and your teachers will be relatively relaxed, they are not wrong. However, just because they are laid back does not mean you can slack off. It also does not mean that they will go easy when it comes to their tests. Even though people may have been lucky to get a teacher who is very chill, people still tend to freak out when a quiz or test comes sneaking up. Skimming your notes a couple minutes before the exam or quiz won’t cut it. Even hoping that studying quickly before you go to bed is wishful thinking that something will stick with you. Although it is not ideal, college is much different than high school, which means that you need to find new studying techniques that will help you excel when tests and quizzes come around. 

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Seeing Without Seeing? Imagine That!

By Kate Aukes

Welcome to college! The next four (or more) years may be some of the most interesting and fun of your life, but a good work-fun balance is important. You will likely find yourself spending some time working on your study strategies as you settle into a new routine and a new school. When it comes to studying the material that you’ve learned and remembering it when test-day arrives, visual imagery will likely be at play. This type of imagery can be very helpful to your performance on exams and your overall studying method. When I started college, my study habits tended to be lacking, and that reflected in some of my grades. As a senior, I can look back and see that my habits have improved greatly over the years and my grades have followed suit. My hope is that this post can help you learn from my mistakes and do well in your first year of college!

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Recall issues? Learn about Interference

Interference may be why you did poorly on your test

By Miranda Molleck

“Did you fail your first college exam? Its okay! Just breathe and keep reading.”

College can sure be rough. You have classes to attend, homework (papers, presentations, assignments), groups presentations, plus studying. You have to balance a lot. Its no wonder students run into interference issues.

“Oh, what is interference? Keep reading my post to find out. There are ways to help reduce the likelihood of interference.”

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Test Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself (or Your GPA)

By Anna Rule

We all have the best of intentions when it comes to preparing for an exam, am I right?  I mean – no one sees a test date on a syllabus and says, “Okay I’m going to wing that one.”  We study, we prepare, and we pray to the founding fathers of Eureka College that they grant us some semblance of a working memory to recall the information when we need it.  While our intentions may be great, we need to ask the question; are we preparing effectively?  While we’re cramming our brains with information, how do we know it will stick?

In my years of studying for tests, it never occurred to me that re-reading my notes wasn’t sufficient.  I thought that because I was going through the material, it would be fresh in my mind and “learned.”  Some can get by on this wildly common practice.  Others (like myself) are not blessed with the good memorization gene.  So, what can you do?  Test yourself.  Of course, this is in conjunction with the wise words of Alan, trusty wolf-pack leader, to ‘check yourself.’  But for the sake of retaining information long-term – stick with the first recommendation and test yourself.

In all seriousness, our academic experiences thus far have allowed us to safely assume that everyone learns in different ways.  Some are visual learners, some learn by doing.  Some are extremely lucky and skim over a note or two and ace a test (I am extremely envious of those people).  One review of how we learn carves out a solid list of 8 effective learning strategies backed by a ton of research (1) which you can view here.  We’re going to dive into one of those 8.  Let’s see how we can retain more by testing ourselves.

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Elaborative Rehearsal, But You Already Knew That!

By Kaci Kingman

 Introduction

Are you a new college freshman and are you freaking out because you just cannot seem to remember things like you used to be able to in high school? Well, you are not alone! Most freshman are going to have problems adjusting to how to correctly study the new material in college. You are not going to be able to remember everything you study, even if thats how you rolled in high school. You need to find a balance between a more in depth approach and a more shallow approach(1). You need to figure out if what you are trying to learn needs to be put into your brain for a long time or not. This will help you in determining how you should study the new information. If you need to make information stay in your brain for a long time, boy do I have an answer for you! Have you ever wondered why you can keep repeating the same thing over and over in your head to try and remember it, just to forget it a few minutes later? Yeah, stop doing that! That is not how you are going to succeed in college, but don’t freak out to much, I have your back. I have a way better way for you to memorize things and it’s called elaborative rehearsal!

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