Strategies

I’ve talked about the importance of retrieval practice at length, so I’m pleased to report on the latest study to confirm its value.

We know active learning is better than passive learning, but for the first time a study gives us some idea of how that works. Participants in the imaging study were asked to memorize an array of objects and their exact locations in a grid on a computer screen.

A working memory training program developed to help children with ADHD has been tested by 52 students, aged 7 to 17.

It’s well known that being too anxious about an exam can make you perform worse, and studies indicate that part of the reason for this is that your limited working memory is being clogged up with thoughts related to this anxiety.

In a study in which 14 volunteers were trained to recognize a faint pattern of bars on a computer screen that continuously decreased in faintness, the volunteers became able to recognize fainter and fainter patterns over some 24 days of training, and this correlated with stronger EEG signals from

There are a number of ways experts think differently from novices (in their area of expertise).

Following on from earlier research suggesting that simply talking helps keep your mind sharp at all ages, a new study involving 192 undergraduates indicates that the type of talking makes a difference.

In a study involving 15 young adults, a very small electrical current delivered to the scalp above the right anterior temporal lobe significantly improved their memory for the names of famous people (by 11%). Memory for famous landmarks was not affected.

In an experiment to investigate why testing might improve learning, 118 students were given 48 English-Swahili translation pairs. An initial study trialwas followed by three blocks of practice trials. For one group, the practice trial involved a cued recall test followed by restudy.

An intriguing new study has found that people are more likely to remember specific information if the pattern of activity in their brain is similar each time they study that information.