The more connections you make between the new concept and old concepts, the more easily it will be to remember the new concept Avoid learning strategies based on recognition (reviewing/re-reading of textbook chapters/notes, highlighting, summarizing) If you prefer, try it with players on your favorite sports team or your favorite authors. The point is to engage your working memory, “maintaining information and moving it around in your mind,” Restak wrote.

Schacter, D. L., Reiman, E., Curran, T., Yun, L. S., Bandy, D., McDermott, K. B., et al. (1996). Neuroanatomical correlates of veridical and illusory recognition memory: Evidence from positron emission tomography. Neuron, 17, 267–274.Schedule your revision of each concept/topic to about the time that you would forget it (this needs self-experimentation as there is no formula to calculate this precisely) To combat context-dependence, you can adopt the same two approaches used for overcoming state-dependence. The first approach would be to emulate the environmental context of the test. For instance, you could revise in a quiet/noisy environment depending on where your exam will be situated. You may also consider revising together with a friend or two to get used to being distracted by other people in the examination room. An even better idea would be to revise in the classroom where you will be taking the test. Memory has three parts: encoding, storage and retrieval. All three need to function successfully to remember what you need to.

The reading group processed the words perceptually, while the generating group processed them semantically – they had to retrieve from memory words with a particular meaning. Whereas perceptual processing matched the processing needed by the perceptual task, semantic processing matched the processing needed during recall (note that words are stored in semantic memory based on their meaning).To do that I collaborated with Jakub Jilek, who has his masters in cognitive science at University College London, and is currently studying for his PhD. In this complete guide, we will cover everything you need to know about memory, how it works and how you can improve it. Eich, E., Macaulay, D., & Ryan, L. (1994). Mood dependent memory for events of the personal past. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123(2), 201–215.

Spacing not only substantially saves time, it also boosts long-term retention. Each study session that is followed by immediate or delayed sleep provides another opportunity to consolidate the studied material (we cover consolidation processes above). Furthermore, spacing can give you more opportunities to associate the study material with more states and contexts (physical, mental, environmental), which makes it easier to retrieve it in the future (see state-dependence and context-dependence). Restak very helpfully provides a number of dos and don'ts to help maintain our memory's function. Some are pretty obvious and some were counterintuitive to me. Of course, one of the keys is to pay attention - easier said than done when the subject matter is not fun. I was surprised that reading fiction is a good thing to do. He notes that people tend to switch to non-fiction when their encounter memory difficulties. I thought it would be the other way around. Playing games is a good thing to do and something that is enjoyable for most of us (my morning always starts with Wordle!). We should beware of technology - that makes sense to me - but maybe not when I'm reading it on my kindle!The distance between study sessions should be about 10-20% of the test delay (e.g. for a test in 10 days, study once a day) Our brains are better at recalling losses and failings rather than positive experiences. Feel and sound familiar? Fiction, on the other hand, requires the reader to proceed from beginning to end while retaining in working memory the various characters and plot developments.