Spaced repetition: remember everything you learn

If you need a technique to enhance your memory and learning, spaced repetition will be your best ally. Pass an exam, pass an exam, study a new language… Mastering this resource allows, above all, to understand how your mind works and those cognitive processes that make it easier to integrate new information in a meaningful and stable way.

This method is based on the use of cards to periodically review the data that you want to consolidate in your memory. Thus, a metaphor that is often used to understand the proposal is to see your brain as a muscle that must be trained. Progressively exposing him to harder exercises will make him gain resistance and agility. Let’s delve deeper into this tool.

What is spaced repetition and how can it help you?

Spaced repetition is a technique developed by the philosopher and psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus at the end of the 19th century.. His work, Memory: a contribution to experimental psychology , Published in 1885, it was a milestone in the field of memory. In this he also gave us the concept of the forgetting curve.

This term allowed us to understand how the brain tends to forget new information if we do not review it regularly. Even something that you have undoubtedly experienced is how difficult it is to retain information as you learn it. If this is your problem and you want to permanently consolidate your memories, this technique will be your greatest help. Let’s investigate it.

Train your brain in optimal memory

He active recall consists in schedule periodic reviews of information at optimal times, just before it disappears from your memory. Frontiers in Psychology points out in a paper that, at the moment, there is no clear consensus on the mechanisms that underlie this effect and why they work. But they do it.

What we do know is that if you review your lessons at spaced and increasing intervals, you will be training your brain to keep such materials stored. This will help the data to consolidate, little by little, in your long-term memory. It’s like brain training with safe and significant results.

The forgetting curve and the importance of reviewing what you learn

Imagine that, for various reasons, you have to learn certain concepts in quantum physics. This is not a subject that is part of your daily life, they are processes and realities that are difficult to understand and integrate. Now, suppose that today you learn the following: “the quantum (quantumin Latin) is the minimum quantity of any physical entity.

If you read it only once, it is likely that after hours you will forget it. Your learning curve, after that first approach, plummets. To restore it, you must expose yourself to that information again several times a day and even update it with more data: “the quantum concept was coined by Max Planck and reinforced in 1905 by the physicist Albert Einstein.”

Your memory and learning ability improve whenever you review information at spaced intervals. If, in addition, you expand it a little more, you will increase its memory potential.

Who can benefit from spaced rehearsal?

This tool is useful in any learning process and integration of new information.. Despite being more than a century old, it became quite popular thanks to books like Fluent Forever: how to learn any language and never forget it (2014) by cognitive psychologist Gabriel Wyner.

In this best seller Teaches readers how to learn languages ​​through spaced repetition. Another notable title is Mindhacker: 60 tips, tricks, and games to take your mind to the next level (2011), from Ron and Marty Hale-Evans. In these pages they offer us techniques to train the brain and achieve maximum performance thanks to this strategy.

Now, the active recall It is favorable for elderly people, because it can slow down cognitive decline. What’s more, an article shared in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research indicates something hopeful. It is possible that the technique brings benefits to the semantic memory of patients with Alzheimer’s.

Understanding how your brain works allows you to make better use of it to learn, remember, and even enhance your creativity. The spaced repetition technique is very useful, because you will be able to create more significant and stable knowledge over time. But to do this, you must carry out this method properly and commit to its application.

How to apply spaced repetition

When it comes to practicing and taking advantage of spaced repetition, you need two things: organization and commitment. The brain is lazy, easily distracted, and has an innate tendency toward saving. That is, what you do not use or that it considers not necessary, will be deleted.

Therefore, to establish new learning you must train it, strengthen it and “take it to the gym.” Repeatedly exposing him to those facts that you need to learn and remember will strengthen him and raise his potential. Below, we give you the steps to carry out this repetition strategy.

1. Organize the material

The first step is to organize the content you want to study, breaking it down into smaller, more manageable units. They can be concepts, theories, definitions, formulas, vocabulary, among others.

2. Create cards

When carrying out the repetition, Use cards or applications intended for this purpose. Currently, you have programs such as Mnemosyne, Anki, Quizlet or SuperMemo or Mnemodo. What you should do is write a question and under it or behind the card, the answer or the concept you want to memorize.

3. Review notes throughout a day

You already made your chips. In them you organized the study content into several units, so that you will have between 15 or 20 cards in total. The next step is simple and decisive. Throughout the first day, You will review them constantly to memorize the information.

The idea is that you first read the question and then try to answer without reading the answer. You must work on a trial-and-error basis, without worrying too much about whether your memory is not optimal. You improve it with the days.

4. The memory over the next 24-36 hours

The second and third day has now arrived after your preparation of the cards. Throughout these 24 and 36 hours it is necessary that you expose yourself to their questions without reading the answers. For it, Always carry the cards with you and use them on the subway, while eating or waiting in line at a store.

Take one out at random and try to retrieve the information from your memory quickly. Make an effort, visualize the answer in your mind and come up with the definition, theory, formula or key word. Then check if you got it right.

5. After four days, complete review

After four days, It’s time to go back to your original materials and delve into all the information again.. Put the cards aside and review. This will help you refresh some data and integrate learning in a more meaningful way. It is an obvious effort, but the results are very positive.

6. A week later, evaluate your performance

The method reaches its best results after a week or eight days. By that time, when you use the cards and read the questions, you will most likely already know the answers and recall them quickly and efficiently. In this regard, Learning and Instruction magazine emphasizes a revealing fact in an article.

In research carried out with a group of university students, they discovered that, when reviewing the material eight days after the lesson, performance was higher and more significant. Therefore, do not hesitate to execute these same steps.

Memory and learning need good techniques

The brain benefits from adequate learning methods. For this reason, it is always so interesting to know how memory works, what its weak points are and how to enhance it. So, even if the resource of spaced repetition seems interesting to you, keep one detail in mind.

Any good technique requires practice and adaptation to each person’s characteristics. Therefore, do not hesitate to assess whether classic paper cards written with classic colored markers or mobile applications for this purpose work better for you. Once you discover what suits you best, apply it every day and you will see good results. The effort is worth it.

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