Chapter 6. Memory: “I Studied All Night for This Exam, But I Can’t Remember a Thing!”

6.1

You spent all of last night cramming for your psychology exam. You were sure that you had learned all the necessary information after all that studying. You made it to the test on time, but you struggled to remember a lot of the material. You are frustrated and pretty sure you received a bad grade on the exam despite pulling an all-nighter.

6.2

What can you do to improve your performance on the next exam? To help you out, we’ll introduce you to some helpful study skills and help you think through the best way to use those skills. To get started, read the following paragraphs from an article in Scientific American titled “Why Testing Boosts Learning.”

6.3

Next, read the following paragraph from the same article, then answer the questions about what you have read in the first two paragraphs:

As expected, students in the practice test group were better at remembering the word pairs during a final exam a week later. But Rawson and Pyc also asked students to tell them their keywords—for instance, “bird” might serve as a bridge between wingu and cloud—and they revealed that the people in the practice test group not only remembered more of their keywords, but they were more likely to have changed their keyword before restudying the word pairs than those who had not been tested. As the researchers reported in Science last October, these results suggest that testing improves memory by strengthening keyword associations and weeding out clues that do not work.

6.4

6.5

Rawson and Pyc’s research gives only one example of the ways that psychology helps us to remember the information we have learned. As you will remember from reading the memory chapter (see what we did there?), there are many ways to improve your memory when studying, which also should improve your test scores.

Some of these techniques include mnemonic devices, the method of loci, and using hierarchical structures to arrange the information in a way that makes sense to you. Perhaps most important is using effortful processing through techniques such as elaborative rehearsal. These techniques will help you to use encoding to enhance both storage and, perhaps most importantly, retrieval of the information. The figure below illustrates how elaborative rehearsal works.

Click on each type of processing to see how likely it is that the memory is stored for you to retrieve later. After all, what good is it to have the information in your memory if you cannot retrieve it and use it when you need to do so, such as on your exam?

6.6

Now that you’ve reviewed the concepts behind encoding and the retrieval of information, you want to know what steps to take so you can succeed on your next exam (and retain that information to use in future psychology classes). To get you started, watch the video below of Dr. Katherine Rawson, whose work you read about earlier in this activity.

What Dr. Rawson is describing is what psychologists call distributed practice, which is much more effective than massed practice, or cramming for an exam.

Another thing that can be helpful to consider is context-dependent memory, or the encoding specificity principle. For better performance on tests, try to replicate the test-taking environment while studying—for example, study in a quiet area—and even sit in the same seat during an exam that you usually sit in during class lecture and discussion. In addition, sleep is important to learning and memory, as it increases the potential for retention for newly acquired information.

6.7

Using what you have learned so far about study skills and memory techniques, decide whether each of the following behaviors would be helpful or not in preparing for your next exam. Move items by dragging them to the correct location or by selecting an item and then selecting the location where it should move.

6.8

Your next upcoming exam is your French exam, which entails lots of memorization of vocabulary and the equivalent words in the English language. Watch the following video, where Dr. Rawson explains what her research has found about techniques that may help you study for this exam.

6.9

One of the most important things in this activity is learning how to integrate study skills. Take a look at the infographic below, for a nice walkthrough of how to use these techniques together.

6.10

6.11

One of the most controversial issues related to memory in recent years has been concussions in sports. Nationally, concussions have been discussed in football players and other individuals who have experienced head trauma, such as female soccer players. Watch the video below to learn more about the impact of these head traumas:

6.12

Remember the three-paragraph article about the work of Rawson and Pyc at the beginning of this activity? Please answer the following questions about it.

6.13