Cognitive Psychology in Education
By Ellory Wahlfeld
Are you cramming for exams? Do you drown in flashcards? There’s a science-backed lifeline that could change the way you hit the books. It’s called maintenance rehearsal, not your average study hack. It’s a brain-tuning, memory-maxing method that could turn your study woes into wins.
Continue reading “Study Like a Rockstar: Mastering Maintenance Rehearsal for Academic Success”By Jonah Lauff
Overview of Concrete Examples/Thinking
Did you know concrete examples and concrete thinking are used throughout everyday life? Concrete examples are defined as real-world, or illustrative, examples of an abstract or declarative concept (Rawson et al. 2015) (1). Concrete thinking is a very specific way of thinking. People from all ages use concrete thinking. From early childhood, concrete thinking is developed from when you are a baby until you are about the age of 7 (2). During the early years of school, specifically the ages from 7 to 12, concrete thinking is a major part of the way kids think when it comes to school at these ages (2). From age 12 until adolescence, kids begin to analyze, generalize, extrapolate, and empathize more (2). Lastly, from adolescence until adulthood, people are experienced when it comes to concrete thinking. People begin to use concrete thinking in their personal experiences and observations that will eventually lead to a solution about things that go on in their life and pertaining to school and work (2). When applying concrete examples and concrete thinking to studying, this makes people study more specific and to the point and apply examples to the concept that happens when studying for a class. Let’s use a concrete example in mathematics. For example, if you have six bananas and take two, you have taken one-third or 33.33% of the bananas. This takes a generalized problem and by someone using a concrete example, in this example it being bananas, and this helps them with remembering a simple math problem. Concrete examples and thinking are a good way for young incoming students in college to take an abstract concept that they may or may not know and apply it to a real-world, illustrative example that helps them better understand the course material.
Continue reading “Let’s Just Be Concrete!”By Nataly Rodriguez
As an incoming freshman studying is the one skill, I hoped you learned in high school but if not here is an idea of how to study!
Use the recency effect! Now you may be wondering what exactly that is but let me explain slowly. The recency effect is the tendency to remember most recently presented items (1). Now an example of this is if you are trying to remember a list of items it is most likely you remember the items you last studied (1). Now using this effect can help move items in short- term memory to a longer-term memory. You would have to constantly revisit the items the same way you learned them.
Continue reading “The Biggest Question for College Students: How do I Study?”By Gabrielle Penberthy
While studying, everyone has experienced the need to snap back others, listen to music, and browse Instagram. We laugh when we communicate with others, we groove to music, and we stay connected when we browse Instagram. We run the risk of drifting from our study goals when we engage in these activities while studying. It is all fun and games until we get a bad grade on that important test or the homework assignment that is half of the final grade. I understand how difficult it might be to resist temptation when your phone is so close. I find myself picking up my phone to put on music or snap others back. But when I do this, I find that I start singing along to the music, which diverts my attention from my studies. Why is this a task so hard to complete? Divided attention, or multitasking, is the term used to describe this. When this occurs, I typically end up with a low grade or find it difficult to respond to an important quiz question. This causes an excessive amount of worry and self-doubt.
Continue reading “One at a Time: The Hidden Power of Singular Focus”By Emma Sandlin
It is quite difficult to start college. There are several issues that must be resolved, the most important of which being how to comprehend and absorb the content in the best possible way. One of the many worries that accompany beginning college is learning how to use elaboration when studying new material. According to cognitive psychologists, elaboration is a very useful technique for enhancing learning and memory retention (1). Elaboration is the process of bringing new information to life by connecting it to what has already been learned or by creating meaningful connections. Students can improve their comprehension and retain more information by using the elaborative encoding method. Study skills mastery is essential to achieving academic brilliance. Elaboration is shown to be an effective tactic for boosting understanding, fortifying memory retention, and encouraging in-depth learning (1). Elaboration makes study sessions more lively by enticing students to actively interact with the content, draw connections, and develop ideas (2). Students that integrate elaborative processing into their study regimens open the door to an abundance of knowledge that is just waiting to be discovered and comprend (3).
By Brody Forsythe
The transformation of becoming a college freshman from a high school senior is a different transition for everyone. Depending on the individual’s experience, goals and interests, it can either be a seamless transition or one with many holes and lots of exposed seams. When it comes to academics, it can be an extremely difficult transition if one is trying to incorporate old study habits that were previously effective in high school. There are numerous students out there that will tell you about their humbling experience with their very first college exam, and I can include myself in that category. I can remember studying for my first chemistry exam thinking about how easy it was going to be to get an “A” on it, and when it came down to taking the test, not a single concept could be retrieved from my mind to help me pass the test. All I could remember was how confident I felt looking over the notes I previously written down, and looking at the practice problems we did in class months prior to the exam and thinking, “Yeah, I’ve got this!”. I was just following my old high school studying procedure and little did I know my whole world about studying was in for a rude awakening.
By Madeline Baldwin
In college, you’re always learning and absorbing new information. It’s a time when you have the opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills. The ability to accurately recall and engage with information is the key to success in the whirlwind of college life. Studying can feel super overwhelming sometimes, but one strategy to increase the effectiveness of studying is something called the self-reference effect, or the SRE.
Continue reading “How Thinking About Yourself Can Help You Learn Better”By Reece Putrich
When studying for an exam, do you try hard to remember everything? Then when you get the exam, you go mind blank and forget it all? Well, this is because you may have shallow processing. Shallow processing happens when you choose to only try and remember the physical features of an object or task. (1) This may happen when you are in a science class and must remember a diagram. While you may be having to memorize the diagram, you may possibly only try to remember the pictures and features you can see. On the other hand, if you were trying to pay close attention to the words or definitions this would then be called deep processing. (1) Deep processing allows our brain to hold more memories and allows our minds to remember information better. You are probably wondering where shallow processing and deep processing come from.
By Daizjah Shannon
Active learning techniques like summarizing, note-taking, and quizzing help you engage with the material and remember it better. These techniques are adaptive because they help you retain important information for future use. Active learning techniques can be used in a variety of ways to help improve your learning and retention of information, such as.
Continue reading “Survival of the Studious: How Adaptive Behaviors Can Improve Your Learning”By Hunter Hall
Learning and retaining information for many people within today’s school system is a struggle. Information can become skewed, easy to forget, mixed around and confused with other topics learned along with the information you’re trying to retain. There are many techniques or tips and tricks one can use to become more efficient in storing information in their mind and keeping it there. One of these techniques is interleaving. Interleaving is a technique used for retaining information at a higher rate in both short term and long term memory. The process of interleaving involves mixing around questions or terms from different topics while studying or learning new material. However, there is an argument against the effectiveness of interleaving. As Doug Rohrer, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida, states in his article about interleaving, the argument is that some believe it can lead to an individual confusing certain information with one another (1). The example given was the words “illusion” and “allusion” (1). Despite this, research held on interleaving has shown that it does indeed improve recall.
