By Nina Relias and Madeline Rockhold
Ever heard of the expressions “dress well to test well” or “I only study well when I am under a lot of stress”? Most college students have their own theories or myths about their study habits which may or may not be accurate. We will be addressing these myths by exploring the nature of state dependent memory and learning. Psychologists have determined that outside factors influence how one studies. By definition, state dependent learning is a type of learning that is associated with a specific state. People have better memory recall when information is retrieved in the same state that it was learned in. Especially when referring to mood. This occurs because human’s brains are comprised of a network of interconnected units or nodes, which activate other surrounding emotional nodes. These nodes are connected to certain events and stimuli in one’s environment that are associated with a specific emotion. These emotions are spread to other association nodes that then are able to interpret stored information along the pathway of activation with more accessibility (1). In short, someone will have better memory retrieval if that person’s mood or physical state is the same at both encoding and retrieval.