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Disfluency Effect – Desirable Difficulties
Among the desirable difficulties that can be introduced into a classroom to enhance memorization, disfluency stands out as being particularly unintuitive. Disfluency is the process of making items to be learned more difficult to process which means that the student, in using more processing, processes the material to a deeper level. This…
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The Spacing Effect – Desirable Difficulties
The spacing Effect is a desirable difficulty for learning (along with the testing effect) that helps produce long lasting, durable memory traces, but has also been ignored in education. The spacing effect is when the learning of material takes place over long periods of time. Usually, when we teach something, we concentrate…
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Cramming – Episodic Memory
Actually cramming works to pass a test, and for millions of students that is the only goal for their education. Eighty-five percent of the students entering university in 2016 were doing so in order to get a qualification that would lead to a better job. For them, cramming works, because they have no intention…
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Testing Effect – Desirable Difficulties
The testing effect is all about memory. If you need to have information memorized, the testing effect is said to be your most powerful tool. The testing effect is a simple to administer intervention that strengthens memory traces – in fact, some researchers specify this as being the most important, ignored finding…
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Controlled <-> Automatic Processes
Although we don’t often think of cognitive processes as part of memory, they are. When you are learning to drive a car, you are overwhelmed by the complexity of the skill. There is so much to think about that it is difficult to imagine yourself driving for enjoyment. There are so many…
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Declarative <-> Procedural Memory
Another aspect of memory that is important in formal learning would be the declarative (or conceptual) and procedural distinction. Declarative memory is made up of information that you can describe or talk about, whereas, procedural memory is made up of the information that allows you to do things (carry out procedures). Declarative…
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The Audience Effect – Motivation
An audience has always been a part of any writing. In the past, an audience was an abstract entity or a “work of fiction” (Ong, 1975, p. 9) that was imagined by the writer. This imagined entity determined the form of writing, the voice the writer takes and the genre of the…
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Short/Long Term Memory
Short-term memory is exactly what the name implies, memory for the short term. It is the memory you are using to feed your thinking. The number of items you can hold in short-term memory is between about four and eight (5±2 or 7±2 depending on the research). You keep items active in…
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Memory Basics
I love memory. It is a part of cognitive psychology, and I found it one of the most fascinating aspects of cognition (I ended up studying attention, but I still love memory). Often, educational reformers will talk with some derision about the role of memory in education. All students (in today’s world)…
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Why The Science of Learning?
The Science of Learning is a blend of scientific knowledge. There is a wealth of scientific knowledge that has been accumulated about how people learn. The knowledge is spread across a number of disciplines and is brought together under the umbrella term The Science of Learning. The Science of Learning is the…
