Space Out
If possible, always try to break up learning into separate
sessions, rather than studying in a nose-to-the-grindstone marathon,
according to Doug Rohrer, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the
University of South Florida, who has conducted several experiments in
this area. "Say you take French eight hours a day for two weeks—language
immersion courses yield excellent performance right after the class.
However, if you want to know French in the long run, you're much better
off spending that same amount of time distributed across a semester or a
year." When you space out learning like this, he says, "you can have up
to 100 percent more retention."
Sleep On It
Hit the books; then hit the pillow. That will help the brain
lock in what you learned. Even naps are beneficial, according to a
Harvard study in which subjects who took a 90-minute snooze after
learning a task performed 50 percent better over a 24-hour period than
the napless group.
"Sleep after learning helps solidify memory," says Susumu Tonegawa, PhD,
a Nobel Prize-winning professor of biology and neuroscience at the
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. According to animal
studies, when you perform a task, the brain cells fire in a certain
sequence. If you then fall asleep, the same cells automatically fire in
an identical sequence without being distracted or disrupted by incoming
visual stimuli. That, Tonegawa says, "solidifies the synapses, which in
turn helps to strengthen the information as a memory." student guardian singapore
Don't Overlearn
Once you've remembered the Spanish word for house or done a
math problem correctly, continuing to practice does very little for
long-term retention, says Rohrer. "Study a lot of material for a little
bit of time in one session, rather than a little bit of material for a
lot of time."
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