Accelerated Learning & Improved Memory via Distributed Practice

Puzzle and Brain Games

Accelerated Learning & Improved Memory via Distributed Practice

May 6th, 2007 |

You’ve decided you’ve got four hours this weekend to review for your psychology exam. Is it better to do it all in one 4-hour session, or divide it up into four separate 1-hour sessions? The first strategy is referred to as massed practice, and the second is referred to as distributed practice.

It turns out overwhelming evidence supports the distributed practice strategy as the better of the two.

How much of a difference can distributed practice make? Let’s say you had a list of 100 vocabulary words to learn for your foreign language class. If your test was tomorrow, it might take you 50 times to study the list so that you know the words perfectly. However, if your test was 3 days from now, and you distributed your practice over 3 days, it might take you only 28 times to study the list to know the words perfectly. In other words, you’d be able to cut study time nearly in half with the same results.

Sound too good to be true? These are the same kind of results a famous German scientist (Ebbinghaus) got when he did some of the first distributed practice experiments back in 1885.

Since then, a considerable amount of research has accumulated demonstrating the wide applicability and power of this technique. For example, distributed practice has shown to greatly benefit the learning of diverse types of information, tasks, and skills, such as:

Foreign languages
Science
History
Mathematics (from the elementary to the college level)
Games
And even motor skills, including sports, playing musical instruments, dance, and so on.

One scientific paper [Reference below] reviewed dozens of other published research studies involving distributed practice. This meta-analysis found the effect size for distributed practice to be huge. To put the statistics into perspective, the average person getting distributed training remembered better than about 67 percent of the people getting massed training.

Since most of us do not distribute our studying over multiple sessions, this tip represents an important way many can accelerate learning and improve memory.

Reference: Donovan JJ, Radosevich DR. A meta-analytic review of the distribution of practice effect: Now you see it, now you don’t. Journal of Applied Psychology. 1999;84(795-805).

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Filed under: Accelerated learning, Improve Memory, Learning Strategies, Smartkit All Posts, Study Skills, Study Tips Post tags: distributed-practice, Ebbinghaus, exam, massed-practice

3 Responses to “Accelerated Learning & Improved Memory via Distributed Practice”

Kyle | Guest May 8th, 2007 - 4:17 pm

I think this is true but I also think it makes you mentally weak. You’re letting you’re subconscious do the work for you. People with photographic memories don’t take breaks and recall what they have read before reading it again. I think it is extremely inefficient, but I believe that constantly going over something without taking breaks will, over time, improve memory signifigantly and make you better at remembering a list and also possibly make it easier to learn things the first time instead of going over it again and “refreshing.”
Kyle | Guest May 8th, 2007 - 4:18 pm

Oh, and if this happens to be true, then in the long run, it will cut your study time by much more than a half.
Nir | Guest July 24th, 2007 - 9:58 pm

Actually Kyle, you’re off, way off.

Memory and understanding do not work the same as time progresses, for example all the words may be understood but only few may be recalled. The differences between the way in which memory and understanding function help explain why so many people find they don’t recall very much after hours of learning and understanding. The reason is that recall tends to get progressively worse as time goes on unless the mind is given brief rests.

If recall is going to be kept at a reasonable level, it is necessary
to find the point at which recall and understanding work in greatest harmony. For normal purposes this point occurs in a time period of between 20 to 40 minutes. A shorter period does not give the mind enough time to appreciate the rhythm and organization of the material, and a longer period results in the continuing decline of the amount recalled.

If a period of learning from a lecture, a book or the mass
media is to take two hours, it is far better to arrange for brief
breaks during these two hours. In this way the recall curve can be
kept high, and can be prevented from dropping during the later
stages of learning. The small breaks will guarantee eight relatively
high points of recall, with four small drops in the middle. Each
of the drops will be less than the main drop would have been
were there no breaks

Here is a graph showing recall without breaks
http://x016.uploaderx.net/x/124_1.JPG

Here is a graph showing recall with breaks
http://x016.uploaderx.net/x/588_2.JPG