Get Your Brain Buzzing: The Generation Effect in Cognitive Psychology for Incoming College Students

By Makenzie Cook

As an incoming student, you may be wondering how to make the best of your learning and retention of new information. Well lucky for you there are many cognitive processes that may help you learn and retain information, one of which is the generation effect. In this blog post, we will be exploring the basics of the generation effect in cognitive psychology, we will discuss its benefits, and even provide you with some tips you may add for good study habits. 

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Because who reads

By Paige Shepard

Have you ever taken a class in high school where you were given some kind of material to read, and of course, you didn’t complete it..right? We all know it didn’t matter if you actually read the material because the teacher would go over it the next day in class. Or something like that. Well, don’t get used to that. Soon, you’ll get to college and it is a repeated cycle of going to class, sitting down, watching the power point presentation, listening to the professor speak about it and taking notes about what is being seen, read and heard. Sometimes, get this, the professor doesn’t even USE a power point. You have to take notes on the words that come out of their mouth. Therefore, you have to PAY ACTUAL ATTENTION in class, crazy right? All the while, you’re wondering if any of this is benefiting your ability to remember the new information being taught and crammed into your brain.

We have all experienced classes that we have attended and left the room and felt confident that we have actually learned absolutely nothing at all. If you haven’t yet, you soon will. However, be smart, because when it comes to studying and getting good grades, most students think all it takes is to read over the material last minute and believe they will remember all of that fresh incoming information when it comes to the time that it needs to be recalled. When reading over all the materials for the exam that you’re taking tomorrow in class, you are probably not going to retain any of it unless you engage in active thinking and be creative. According to the generation effect, we should change the way we study for exams or study to remember information.

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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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Generating a Better Memory

By Heather Triplett and Patrick Haas

Studying can be something that is hard for students as they begin college. In high school you might have been able to pay attention in class and still get A’s without worrying about studying, or you might have just had to read the text and known everything that was going to be on the test. Yet, as we get older teachers and professors ask more difficult questions and expect you to know more information when it comes to test time. For each class in college your professor will ask you to purchase an expensive textbook, and read a certain chapter from the book to be prepared for class. These topics are no Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows people, these topics are dry definitions with no stories in them. So what can you do to make it easier to retain the information rather than just simply reading your textbook?

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Just Because You’ll Read It, Doesn’t Mean You’ll Remember It

By Daniel Berg and John Clark

So you’ve read the material a few times for your essay exam coming up this week. Scanning through the words, the content is familiar and you think you are gonna ace this exam. Stop and think, especially you freshmen. This isn’t high school anymore. While you may think reading through the material for essay exam three or maybe four times is going to ensure that you get that A, it, in fact, does not. Here’s why.

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Efficient Encoding is the Secret to Success in College

By Makayla Bradley and Catherine Cunningham

When you’re a college freshman, you’re a bundle of emotions and have a million thoughts about what college is going to be like, running through your mind. We can safely assume that not one of these thoughts is centered around studying and getting good grades, which is a huge mistake. Before you know it, you’ll be eyeballs deep in readings, homework, papers, and tests, with no tools in your toolbox to combat the endless work you’re going to face. Many freshmen enter college not prepared for work they’ll be asked to complete and the difficulty of college exams. Although there isn’t much you can do to change the amount of work you’ll encounter, you can do something about the way you study for the exams.

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