Hello listeners, welcome to The Science of Self, where you improve your life from the
inside out.
Today is April 12, 2024, and today we are diving into how the brain memorizes, all based
on the insights from Peter Holland's book, Super Brain.
To learn more about Peter Holland's and his work, check out his website at bit.ly.com.
But before we jump in, let's take a deep breath and get ready to unlock some powerful
strategies on how we can learn and remember anything.
Memory of course is heavily related to learning.
People are seldom said to have learned something if they can't really remember any of it.
This is why so many techniques and methods around learning focus on recall.
As with other aspects of our cognition, however, we can drastically improve our memory if we
take the time to understand its optimal function and how we can support this for better learning.
If memory is a storage system that exists within specific neural pathways, then learning
is about changing neural pathways to adapt one's behavior and thinking to the emergence
of new information.
They depend on each other because the goal of learning is to assimilate new knowledge
into memory, and memory is useless without the ability to learn more.
Many memory techniques exist, but they all truly function on the contents of this chapter.
Memorization is how we store and retrieve information for use, essentially the process
of learning.
And there are three steps to creating a memory.
An error in any of these steps will result in knowledge that is not effectively converted
to memory, a weak memory, or the feeling of, I can't remember his name, but he was wearing
purple, one, encoding, two, storage, three, retrieval.
Learning is the step of processing information through your senses.
We do this constantly, you're doing it right now.
We encode information, both consciously and subconsciously, through all of our senses.
If you're reading a book, you're using your eyes to encode information.
But how much attention and focus are you actually giving it?
The more attention and focus you devote to an activity, the more conscious your encoding
becomes.
Otherwise, it can be said that you subconsciously encode information, like listening to music
at a cafe, or seeing traffic pass you by at a red traffic light.
Many people mistakenly think they have a bad memory, when it may be more accurate to say
that it's a question of attention.
Such a person might forget the name of someone they just met, not because they have a faulty
memory, but because they simply weren't paying much attention when they were introduced.
But they do remember in great detail the adorable dog on a lead walking past at just that moment.
How much focus and attention you devote also determines how strong the memory is, and consequently,
whether that memory only makes it to your short-term memory, or if it passes through
the gate to your long-term memory.
If you're reading a book while watching television, your encoding is probably not too deep or
strong.
Similarly, you're more likely to remember something that has strong emotional significance
for you when compared with something that doesn't really concern you beyond the intellectual
level.
Storage is the next step after you've experienced information with your senses and encoded it.
What happens to the information once it passes through your eyes or ears?
There are three choices for where this information can go, and they determine whether it's a
memory that you will consciously know exists.
There are essentially three memory systems, sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term
memory.
The last step of the memory process is retrieval, which is when we actually use our memories
and can be said to have learned something.
You might be able to recall it from nothing, or you might need a cue to bring the memory
up.
Long-term memories might only be memorized in a sequence or as part of a whole, like
reciting the ABCs and then realizing you need to sing to remember how it goes.
Usually, however much attention you devoted to the storage and encoding phases of memory
determines just how easy it is to retrieve those memories.
Most of the learning process isn't necessarily focused on retrieval.
It's concentrated on the storage aspect and what you can do to force information from
sensory and short-term areas into long-term ones.
Think about when you cram for a test.
You want information you experienced to be in your brain for perhaps 24 hours, which
means it has to exist beyond short-term memory and certainly beyond sensory memory.
You might not care if you remember this information about the French Revolution at the end of
the year.
So you'll reach a level of attention and focus that will push the information into
the hazy area between short and long-term memory.
In reality, what's happening is that you will rehearse the information enough to make
a very faint imprint on your long-term memory, but after that, the impression fades pretty
quickly.
Accelerating your learning, in a sense, is the same as improving your memory capacity
and how absorbent your memory is.
The more sponge-like the better.
It's also about giving you conscious control over the steps of the process that normally
run automatically.
If you know how and why your memory works, you can squeeze the most out of it.
Forgetting
However, learning is both the process of improving memory while also getting better at not forgetting.
Why do we forget?
Why can't we remember this fact?
How did we ever let something slip from our brains?
As you've read, forgetting is usually a failure or shortcoming in the storage process.
The information you want only makes it to short-term memory, not long-term.
The problem isn't that you can't find the information in your brain, it's that the
information wasn't embedded strongly enough to begin with.
This may have happened partly because you never cemented the memory by recalling it
again and again, i.e., you didn't strengthen those tentative neural connections in your
brain seeing that they weren't really needed, let them go.
Sometimes it's easier to think about forgetting as a failure in learning.
There are generally three different ways you retrieve or access your memories.
One, recall.
Two, recognition.
Three, relearning.
Recall is when you remember a memory without external cues.
It's when you can recite something on command in a vacuum, for example, looking at a blank
piece of paper and then writing down the capitals of all the countries in the world.
When you can recall something, you have the strongest memory of it.
You've either rehearsed it enough or attached enough significance to it so that it is an
incredibly strong memory within your long-term memory.
You go into your brain's storage, find exactly what you're looking for, and reproduce it
in full.
Of course, because recall represents the strongest level of memory, it's also typically the toughest
to achieve.
It would generally require hours of rehearsal or study to get anywhere close to this level.
However, once we acquire information this way, the benefit is that it's a lot harder
to unlearn or forget.
When we study, we want information to enter this realm, but we'll usually settle for the
next type of memory retrieval.
Recognition is when you can conjure up your memory in the presence of an external cue.
It's when you might not be able to remember something by pure recall, but if you get a
small clue or reminder, you'll remember it.
For example, you might not be able to recall all the capitals of the world, but if you got
a clue, such as the first letter of the capital or something that rhymes with it, it would
be fairly easy to state it.
This jogs your memory enough that you can carry on once you get started.
When we cram information, recognition is typically what we end up with.
This is also how mnemonics and similar memory devices work.
We know we aren't able to definitively store and recall so many pieces of information without
a massive amount of rehearsal, so we work on chunking information into recognizable
cues.
With the right cue, we're pointed in the right direction and can gradually access memories
stored a little less concretely.
Rewearning is undoubtedly the weakest form of recall.
It occurs when you're relearning or reviewing information and it takes you less effort each
consecutive time.
For example, if you read a list of country capitals on Monday and it takes you 30 minutes,
it should take you 15 minutes the next day and so on.
Unfortunately, this is where we mostly lie on a daily basis.
We might be familiar with a concept, but we haven't committed enough of it to memory
to avoid essentially relearning it when we look at it again.
This is what happens when we're new to a topic or we've forgotten most of it already.
When you're in the relearning stage, you essentially haven't taken anything past the
barrier of short-term memory into long-term memory.
From your brain's perspective, this kind of information is simply not important, relevant,
or repeated enough to warrant more space in your memory.
The forgetting curve.
Not only are we fighting weak encoding or storage in our quest for learning, we're
also fighting the brain's natural tendency to forget as soon as possible.
This is encapsulated by the forgetting curve, a concept pioneered by psychologist Hermann
Ebbinghaus.
The forgetting curve shows the rate of memory decay and forgetting over time if there's
no attempt to move information into long-term memory.
If you read something about the French Revolution on Monday, then you'll typically remember
only half of it after four days and retain as little as 30% at around a week's time.
If you don't review what you've learned, it's very likely you'll only retain 10% of
what you learned about the French Revolution.
However, if you review and rehearse it, you'll retain and memorize more over time.
You'll bump the retention level back up to 100%, and then the graph will start to become
shallower, indicating less decay.
It says though you're teaching your brain, this is important, I keep needing to know
this, so remember it.
The goal is to make the forgetting curve shallower.
To make it resemble a horizontal line as much as possible, that would indicate very little
decay, and doing that requires constant review and rehearsal.
Ebbinghaus found patterns for memory loss and isolated two simple factors that affected
the forgetting curve.
First, the rate of decay was significantly blunted if the memory was strong and powerful
and had personal significance to the person.
Second, the amount of time and how old the memory was determined how quickly and severely
it decayed.
This suggests there's little we can do about forgetting other than to come up with tactics
to assign personal significance to information and rehearse more often.
As you can see, forgetting isn't as simple as having something on the tip of your tongue
or rummaging through the stores of your brain.
There are very specific processes that make it a near miracle we actually retain as much
as we do.
You've probably also noticed that improving your memory is as much about good encoding
and attention as it is proper rehearsing and recall.
Being able to recall information is always the goal, but more realistically, we should
be shooting for recognition and to learn how to expertly use cues and hints in our daily
lives.
I may not be able to recite the lyrics of my favorite songs, but I can sure remember
them if I hear the melody.
If I become expert in managing cues for myself, I can work around the unavoidable limits of
my memory.
The Study Cycle
Another way to work with the brain and the inbuilt mechanisms of memory is to use what's
called the study cycle.
Rather than one technique, this approach is about using a series of different techniques
in a particular order for a particular duration to maximize learning.
In fact, the principles behind the study cycle could explain why tactics such as retrieval
practice and spaced repetition work so well.
The cycle consists of five sequential steps to follow.
This will help you cement new material and, as you do so, you'll build a deeper sense
of confidence in yourself as you gain knowledge and build on each new development.
The cycle is also great for keeping yourself organized and motivated.
Often, when we sit down to simply study, the intention is so vague that we only waste time
and miss out on an opportunity to really learn well.
But with a structured, flowing study cycle, we know where we stand, and we can apply the
steps to any coursework we like.
The steps are Preview, Attend, Review, Study, and Assess, and then the cycle is repeated.
The first step is to Preview.
Don't just dive in, rather, begin by trying to get a broad overview of what you're doing,
in what context, and why.
See the big picture.
What this looks like will depend on you and the subject you're studying.
For example, if you're reading through an important chapter in a textbook, you might
need to start with some skimming, i.e., read through the main headings and subheadings,
scan any pictures and diagrams with their titles, look at any summaries at the end,
data such as graphs or tables, and bolded sections or pull quotes that might have been
highlighted as important.
This way, you can prime and cue your learning.
If your studies are taking a less traditional form, you might still like to begin by going
through the material quickly to get an overview.
Look through a piece of music quickly and note the time signature, the tempo, the key,
and get an idea of the melody.
If you're going through some academic journal articles, go through the abstracts first and
broadly see what the research question, methodology, and conclusions were in each before reading
in detail.
The next step is to attend, i.e., pay attention.
Crucially, the preview section helps you direct where your attention goes, that is, onto the
most important concepts, but in the second step, you need to apply that attention fully.
Here, you want to be as focused and aware as possible.
Don't just sit in a lecture passively or watch a tutorial video without taking notes.
This means you engage with the data coming in.
Make notes, ask questions, who, what, where, when, why, how, and have a dialogue with the
material.
Jot questions and book margins and find out how to answer them.
Make summaries or simplified diagrams and use as many of your senses as possible when
you encode this new information.
When you generate your own study aids and explain the concepts to yourself, you'll comprehend
better and retain more.
For step three, we review.
Just as we previewed, now we look again and see what ground we've covered and what material
has been absorbed.
Just the act of revisiting what you've taken in reinforces it further.
At the end of your study session, stop and take stock.
Look again through your notes and summaries, and perhaps even answer some questions you
had at the beginning of the session.
You are, in essence, skimming again, but this time, instead of seeing the big picture of
what you're going to learn, you do a quick survey of what you have learned.
Drill a few new concepts, revisit the main themes, and just take a moment to let everything
sink in.
If you practice retrieval immediately after learning some new data, you're teaching your
brain not only to file away important information, but to cement a path via which you can search
for and recall that data later on.
Step four is to study.
The material is there.
Now you need to make sure it's taking root in your brain permanently.
The key to this?
Repetition.
For around 30 to 50 minutes, go over concepts, definitions, problems, or ideas, reinforcing
your understanding.
Pay attention to those parts that are most difficult for you, but remember to keep seeing
each unit in relation to the whole.
Here you can draw on all the previous steps to sit with the material and encode it into
your brain.
The last step is to assess.
Here you want to check how well the process is going.
Check how much you've retained, but also ask yourself how well your study techniques are
working.
Try some tests or worked problems and appraise your performance in memory.
Based on the outcome, adjust your approach time.
You'll know you've probably absorbed the material when you're ready to confidently
teach the concepts to another person and feel that you comprehend enough to reproduce it
or score well on a test.
On the other hand, you might do well with the material, but wish to change the study
approach.
For example, spending more or less time on different steps or using a different active
reading technique.
When you're done, you start again with step one.
Retrieval practice.
So how can we use this knowledge about our memories to be more effective learners?
There's one major technique that applies the fickle nature of memory, retrieval practice.
We typically consider learning something we absorb, something that goes into our brains.
The teacher or textbook spits facts, data, equations, and words out at us, and we just
sit there and collect them.
It's merely accumulation, a very passive act.
This kind of relationship with learning returns knowledge that we don't retain for very long
because even though we get it, we don't do much with it.
For best results, we have to make learning an active operation.
That's where retrieval practice comes into play.
Instead of putting more stuff in our brains, retrieval practice helps us take knowledge
out of our brains and put it to use.
That seemingly small change in thinking dramatically improves our chances of retaining and remembering
what we learn.
Everyone remembers flashcards from childhood days.
The front of the cards had math equations, words, science terms, or images, and the
backs had the answer, the solution, definition, explanation, or whatever response the student
is expected to give.
The idea of flashcards sprouts from a strategy called retrieval practice.
This approach is neither new nor very complicated.
It's simply recalling information you've already learned, the back of the flashcard, when prompted
by a certain image or depiction, the front.
Retrieval practice is one of the best ways to increase your memory and fact retention.
But even though its core is quite simple, actually using retrieval practice isn't quite
as straightforward as just passively drilling with flashcards or scanning over notes we've
taken.
Rather, retrieval practice is an active skill, truly struggling, thinking, and processing
to finally get to the point of recalling that information without clues.
Much of what we've discussed already in this book, that accelerates learning.
Puja Agarwal researched pupils taking middle school social studies over the course of a
year and a half, ending in 2011.
The study aimed to determine how regularly scheduled uncounted quizzes, basically retrieval
practice exercises, benefited the ability to learn and retain.
The class teacher didn't alter their study plan and simply instructed as normal.
The students were given regular quizzes, developed by the research team, on class material with
the understanding that the results would not count against their grades.
These quizzes only included about a third of the material covered by the teacher, who
also had to leave the room while the quiz was being taken.
This was so the teacher had no knowledge of what subjects the quiz is covered.
In class, the teacher taught and reviewed the class as usual, without knowing which
parts of the instruction were being asked on the quizzes.
The results of this study were measured during end of unit exams, and were quite dramatic.
Students scored one full grade level higher on the material the quiz is covered, the one
third of what the whole class covered, than the questions not asked on the no-stakes quizzes.
The mere act of being occasionally tested, with no pressure to get all the answers right
to boost their overall grades, actually helped students learn better.
Agarwal's study also provided insight on what kind of questions helped the most.
Questions that required the student to actually recall the information from scratch yielded
more success than multiple choice questions, in which the answer could be recognized from
a list or true-false questions.
The active mental effort to remember the answer, with no verbal or visual prompt, improved
the student's learning and retention.
Using retrieval practice in our lives
The principal benefit of retrieval practice is that it encourages an active exertion of
effort, rather than the passive seepage of external information.
When we learn something once and then actually do something else to reinforce our learning,
it has more of an effect than merely reviewing notes or rereading passages in books.
The knowledge that we store in our memory is activated when it's called out.
Retrieval practice stimulates that movement and makes it easier to learn and retain new
understandings.
If we pull concepts out of our brain, it's more effective than just continually trying
to put concepts in.
The learning comes from taking what's been added to our knowledge and bringing it out
at a later time.
We mentioned flashcards at the top of this section and how they're an offshoot of retrieval
practice.
But flashcards are not in and of themselves the strategy.
You can use them and still not be conducting true retrieval practice.
Many students use flashcards somewhat inactively.
They see the prompt, answer it in their heads, tell themselves they know it, flip over to
see the answer and then move on to the next one.
Turning this into practice, however, would be taking a few seconds to actually recall
the answer and at best say the answer out loud before flipping the card over.
The difference seems slight and subtle, but it's important.
Students will get more advantages from flashcards by actually retrieving and vocalizing the
answer before moving on.
In real-world situations, where there's usually not an outside teacher, pre-made flashcards
or other assistants, how can we repurpose what we learn for retrieval practice?
One good way is to expand flashcards and make them more interactive.
The flashcards in our grade school experiences, for the most part, were very one note.
You can adapt the methodology of flashcards for more complex real-world applications or
self-learning by taking a new approach to what's on the back of the cards, as suggested
by writer Rachel Andranja.
When you're studying material for work or class, make flashcards with concepts on the
front and definitions on the back.
After completing this task, make another set of cards that give instructions on how to
reprocess the concept for a creative or real-life situation.
Here's an example.
Write this concept in plain English.
Write a movie or novel plot that demonstrates this concept.
Use this concept to describe a real-life event.
Describe the opposite of this concept.
Draw a picture of this concept.
The possibilities are, as they say, limitless in how you can seek retrieval.
Studying these exercises extracts more information about the concept that you produce yourself.
Placing them in the context of a creative narrative or expression will help you understand
them when they come up in real life.
Our memories are fickle, and they like to play tricks on us by design, but they can
be molded to our advantage in learning more quickly.
Spaced repetition.
This method is directly aimed at dealing with beating forgetting.
Spaced repetition, otherwise known as distributed practice, is just what it sounds like.
The reason it's such an important technique in improving your memory is that it battles
forgetting directly and allows you to work within the bounds of your brain's capabilities.
Other techniques, no less important, are about increasing encoding or storage.
Over the three parts of memory are encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Spaced repetition helps the last part, retrieval.
In order to commit more to memory and retain information better, space out your rehearsal
and exposure to it over as long of a period as possible.
In other words, you'll remember something far better if you study it for one hour a
day versus 20 hours in one weekend.
This goes for just about everything you could possibly learn.
Additional research has shown that seeing something 20 times in one day is far less
effective than seeing something 10 times over the course of 7 days.
Spaced repetition makes more sense if you imagine your brain as a muscle.
Muscles can't be exercised all the time and then put back to work with little to no recovery.
Your brain needs time to make connections between concepts, create muscle memory, and
generally become familiar with something.
Sleep has been shown to be where neural connections are made, and it's not just mental, synaptic
connections are formed in your brain, and dendrites are stimulated.
If an athlete works out too hard in one session, like you might be tempted to do in studying,
one of two things will happen.
The athlete will either be too exhausted and the latter half of the workout will be useless,
or the athlete will become injured.
Rest and recovery are necessary to the task of learning, and sometimes effort isn't what's
required.
Here's a look at what a schedule focused on spaced repetition might look like.
Monday at 10am.
Learn initial facts about Spanish history.
You accumulate five pages of notes.
Monday at 8pm.
Review notes about Spanish history, but don't just review passively.
Make sure to try to recall the information from your own memory.
Recalling is a much better way to process information than simply re-reading and reviewing.
This might only take 20 minutes.
Tuesday at 10am.
Try to recall the information without looking at your notes much.
Once you first try to actively recall as much as possible, go back through your notes to
see what you missed, and make note of what you need to pay closer attention to.
This will probably take only 15 minutes.
Tuesday at 8pm.
Review notes.
This will take 10 minutes.
Wednesday at 4pm.
Try to independently recall the information again, and only look at your notes once you're
done to see what else you've missed.
This will take only 10 minutes.
Make sure not to skip any steps.
Thursday at 6pm.
Review notes.
This will take 10 minutes.
Friday at 10am.
Active recall session.
This will take 10 minutes.
Looking at this schedule, note that you're only studying an additional 75 minutes throughout
the week, but that you've managed to go through the entire lesson of whopping six additional
times.
Not only that, you've likely committed most of it to memory because you're using active
recall instead of passively reviewing your notes.
You're ready for a test the next Monday.
Actually, you're ready for a test by Friday afternoon.
Spaced repetition gives your brain time to process concepts and make its own connections
and leaps because of the repetition.
Think about what happens when you have repeated exposure to a concept.
For the first couple of exposures, you may not see anything new.
As you get more familiar with it and stop going through the motions, you begin to examine
it on a deeper level and think about the context surrounding it.
You relate it to other concepts or information, and you generally make sense of it below surface
level.
All of this, of course, is designed to push information from your short-term memory into
your long-term memory.
That's why cramming or studying at the last minute isn't an effective means of learning.
Very little tends to make it into long-term memory because of the lack of repetition and
deeper analysis.
At that point, it becomes rote memorization instead of the concept learning we discussed
earlier, which is destined to fade far more quickly.
When you set out to learn something, instead of measuring the number of hours you spend
on something, try instead to measure the number of times you revisit the same information
after the initial learning.
Make it your goal to increase the frequency of reviewing, not necessarily the duration.
Both matter, but the literature on spaced repetition or distributed practice makes clear that breathing
room is necessary.
It's true that this type of optimal learning takes up more time in planning than most of
us are used to.
However, if you find yourself short on time, you can still use it strategically.
To cram for a test, exam, or other type of evaluation, we don't need material to make
it to our long-term memory.
We just needed to make it slightly past our working memory and be partially encoded into
our long-term memory.
We don't need to be able to recall anything the day after, so it's like we only need
something to stick for a few hours.
You might not be able to do true spaced repetition if you're cramming at the last minute, but
you can simulate it in a small way.
Instead of studying subject X for three hours only at night, seek to study it one hour each,
three times a day, with a few hours between each exposure.
Recall that memories need time to be encoded and stick in the brain.
You're doing the best imitation of spaced repetition you can with what you have available.
To get the most out of your limited studying time, study something, for example, as soon
as you wake up, and then review it at noon, 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.
The point is to review throughout the day and get as much repetition as possible.
Remember to focus on frequency rather than duration.
During the course of your repetition, make sure to study your notes out of order to see
them in different contexts and encode more effectively.
Also use active recall versus passive reading.
Don't be afraid to even interspersed unrelated material to reap the benefits of interleaved
practice.
Make sure to focus on the underlying concepts that govern the information you're learning
so you can make educated guesses about what you don't remember.
Make sure that you're reciting and rehearsing new information up to the last minute before
your test.
Your short-term memory can hold 7 items on its best day, so you might just save yourself
with a piece of information that was never going to fit in your long-term memory.
It's like you're juggling.
It's inevitable that you'll drop everything, but it could just so happen that you're juggling
something you can use.
Make use of all types of memory so you can conscious.
Make use of all types of memory you can consciously employ.
Spaced repetition, as you can see, approaches learning from a different perspective.
In practicing retrieval and shooting for frequency as opposed to duration to improve memory.
Even in situations where you don't have as much time as you'd like, you can use spaced
repetition to cram for tests and overall just get more information into your brain.
And by focusing on frequency and not duration.
When you spread out your learning and memorizing over a longer period of time and revisit the
same material frequently, you'll be better off.
Takeaways Learning relies on memory, and memory is in
turn an interplay between two processes, storing and retrieving information.
There are three main steps, encoding, storing, and retrieval.
How well we encode material, i.e. cement it into our minds, depends on the degree and
intensity of attention we pay it, as well as the senses through which we encounter it
and our associated emotions.
When we store memories, we do so either as transient sensory memory, short-term memory,
or more long-term memory.
Preferable is when we return to stored memories and pull them out again, either with a cue
or helpful sequence, or without one.
We can retrieve information in a few ways, recall it directly, no cues, this is obviously
preferable, recognition, remembering something after a cue or prompt, and relearning, which
is the least effective and lasting method.
Learning is a normal state of affairs, and occurs on a forgetting curve.
Every time we rehearse, however, we refresh this memory, and the subsequent forgetting
trails off at a less steep curve.
The goal is to rehearse until the curve eventually flattens, and the rate of decay slows enough
for you to say, I've permanently learnt this.
The study cycle is a process to follow to maximize your learning process given the way
memory works.
The steps are preview, attend, review, study, and assess, and then begin the cycle again.
In a study session, it's best to flow through each step consciously, establishing context,
paying attention, actively reading and engaging, drilling the material, and then taking time
to assess how well the process went afterwards.
Retrieval practice is the art of practicing what most cements memories, retrieving them.
It's an active process, and instills memory firmly.
Space repetition is most effective for practicing retrieval and countering forgetting.
Deliberate practice too can help you control what you're practicing, and how this can
enhance your learning and knowledge over time.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Science of Self.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend who might also benefit from
these insights.
Remember, improving yourself is a journey, and we're here with you every step of the
way.
For more resources on how to improve yourself from the inside out, visit the author's
website at bit.ly-PeterHollins, and don't forget to subscribe to the show so you never
miss an episode.
We'll see you next time.