For some of us, this seems counter-intuitive. We study like crazy to pass a test, take the test, and then forget everything immediately. Right?
Well, according to this study, that isn't entirely true. Generally, testing strengthens memory for items that are correctly recalled. The flip side of that is, the things you fail to recall become comparatively weaker. Restudying and retesting can remedy that, and help strengthen recall for those items that were weaker.
What interests me about this is that, as college students, we generally hate taking tests -- for the reason I mentioned before. It seems futile because we will only remember the information for the test and then immediately forget everything, not just the things we got wrong. I wonder why so many of us feel that way, and if it might be more an issue of not being asked to recall the information again. Thinking we've forgotten it because we haven't actively called it up again since.
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I was intrigued by the allusion to "metacognitive ratings" in the "Concluding comment" section of the article. After reading an overview of metacognition here:
http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm
it seemed to me that metacognition plays a more dominant role in information retention/studying than the article acknowledged.
Metacognition, relative to education, includes "activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature." The article goes on to state that "because metacognition plays a critical role in successful learning, it is important to study metacognitive activity and development to determine how students can be taught to better apply their cognitive resources through metacognitive control."
It seems to me that the subjectivity of metacognition, i.e. what works for the student defined by the student, if developed by educators, seems a more productive study-strategy than simply focusing on ways to approach the given material, primarily because different subjects demand different study strengths, but if a student is taught to actively engage in metacognition, they may discover their own successful way of approaching all materials in all subjects, not just how to get by on a subject by subject basis.
I wanted a more basic understanding of memory retrieval after reading both articles so I found a short overview here:
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/memory_retrival.htm
This article then piqued my interest in retrieval problems. I decided to look into it a bit more and came across this article:
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~scanlab/papers/2003_Schacter_SevenSinsSelf.pdf
It looks into the "seven sins of memory" and how these retrieval problems can effect people's understanding of themselves and shape who they are. For example, in the case of the "sin" of Persistence (unpleasant memories that can not be forgotten) a traumatic memory such as sexual assault, can begin to define the self and effect how a person views their past, present, and future. The idea that not only our memories, but also memory's shortcomings, influence who we are was especially interesting to me.
Like many students I find tests difficult, but this article does make sense. It fits in with the idea of ‘rehearsal’ being an important component of memory. Not just the rehearsal of learning something, but being able to reproduce it in your own way.
I agree with the comment, that although testing may improve our memory, do we ever really use, or even need, a lot of this information that we have learned.
There is another point that comes out of this discussion and I think it’s about an all-round education. Is it important, or useful, for us to have a wider range of knowledge that we may get from various exams that seem useless at the time?
In conjunction with this article, I also read an article on Sciencenews.org that stated not only does testing improve memory, but it is even more successful when combined with a ‘mediator’. A mediator is “…word, phrase or concept — the students used to link the words”. A pair of Researches at Kent State University in Ohio asked 118 college students to study 48 pairs of Swahili and English words. They hypothesized that when studying foreign languages, it is more effective not only to be tested consistently but also to recall their mediator just before the exam. This article interested me as I thought seeing the word over and over would be more effective for recalling memories but it seems to be the amount of connections in your brain to a word rather than the amount of exposure that helps your mind recall.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/64316/title/How_testing_improves_memory
I found this article: Repeated test-taking better for retention than repeated studying, research shows by Gerry Everding through Washington University in St. Louis. Basically it agrees with the original post in that testing improves retention, not simply with studying the material over and over again.
I think that most students can agree, pop quizzes and tests in general are the bane of our existence. These teaching techniques are up there with research papers in terms of what students hate most about class. But it all depends on if we want to retain the information or not. "Cramming" improves performance in the short-run but if we really want to learn the material for future recall, repeated testing forces our brains to practice the exact same process of recall that will be used later. Maybe remembering the battle strategy used by Napoleon at Waterloo won't be useful in our careers. But suppose that you're a student learning the intricate processes of a difficult photo editing program - that would be something worth remembering. As both articles have stated, your best way of recalling that information would be to test yourself.
I think the problem of forgetting everything after a test is more about we do not use those information after that test anymore or at least we make ourselves believe that particular information is not necessary anymore so we just push it back in our brain to get more space for new knowledge. However in order for these tests to be much more effective, the tests should be reviewed. Without actually going over something that we did wrong we will never really learn the correct thing. Even when we were little teachers used to review all the test questions we had and we would not do the same mistake again, but now it is more likely about how we accept some information as "true" in our brains. I think also "learning" and "memorizing" are different concepts so they take different amount of time to forget.
http://books.google.com/books?id=evrfDR09mDsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA313#v=onepage&q=313&f=false
on the page 313 of this book by Dennis Coon, you can find information about Herman Hebbinghaus' experiment about learning and memorization. The curve of forgetting shows the amount of information remembered after varying lengths of time. Since we cram all night before the test, we forget everything, but after the test if we go over those questions again it will most definitely will be a little easier to remember.
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