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PSYCHOLOGY IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Effortful processing requires closer months, rather than over a shorter meaningful context, they remembered
attention and effort, and chunking and term, can help you retain information little of it. Others were told the paragraph
mnemonics help us form meaningful for a lifetime. described doing laundry (something
and accessible memories. But mem- One effective way to distribute prac- meaningful to them). They remembered
ory researchers have also discovered tice is repeated self- testing, often called much more of it — as you probably could
other important influences on how the testing effect (Roediger & Karpicke, now after rereading it.
we capture information and hold it in 2006; Yang et al., 2021). Testing does more Can you repeat the sentence about
memory. than assess learning and memory; it the angry rioter (from this chapter’s
improves them (Su et al., 2020). In this opening section)?
textbook, the Retrieve & Remember Was the sentence “The angry rioter
REtRIEVE REMEMBER questions and Review sections, includ- threw the rock through the window” or
ANSWERS IN APPENDIX F ing the Chapter Tests, offer oppor- “The angry rioter threw the rock at the
3. What is the difference between automatic tunities to improve learning and window”? If the first looks more correct,
and effortful processing, and what are some memory. “Practicing retrieval facili- you — like the participants in the origi-
examples of each? tates learning,” notes memory expert nal study — may have recalled the mean-
4. At which of Atkinson- Shiffrin’s three Kathleen McDermott (2021). So, it’s better ing you encoded, not the actual written
memory stages would iconic and echoic to practice retrieval (as any exam will words (Brewer, 1977).
memory occur?
demand) than to merely reread material We can avoid some encoding errors
(which may lull you into a false sense by rephrasing what we see and hear
of mastery). No wonder daily quizzing into personally meaningful terms. From
Spaced Study and improves introductory psychology stu- his experiments on himself, Hermann
Self- Assessment dents’ course performance (Batsell et al., Ebbinghaus estimated that, compared
LOQ 7-8 Why is cramming ineffective, 2017; Pennebaker et al., 2013). So, too, can with learning nonsense syllables,
and what is the testing effect? Why is teaching the material to someone else, learning meaningful material required
it important to make new information self- testing with flash cards, and clicker one- tenth the effort. As another mem-
meaningful? responding to teacher questions (Fazio & ory researcher noted, “The time you
Marsh, 2019). spend thinking about material you
We retain information better when The point to remember: Spaced study are reading and relating it to previ-
our encoding is spread over time. and self- assessment beat cramming ously stored material is about the most
Experiments have confirmed that and rereading. Practice may not make useful thing you can do in learning
this spacing effect (distributed prac- perfect, but smart practice — occasional any new subject matter” (Wickelgren,
tice) produces better long- term recall rehearsal with self- testing — makes for 1977, p. 346).
(Cepeda et al., 2006; Soderstrom et al., 2016). lasting memories. What information do people most
Cramming (massed practice) can pro- easily remember? Personally relevant
duce speedy short- term learning and Making New Information information. For passwords, people
an inflated feeling of confidence. But Meaningful (you, too?) often use self- relevant infor-
as pioneering memory researcher mation (Taylor & Garry, 2019). This ten-
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) Spaced practice helps, but if new infor- dency, called the self- reference effect,
observed in 1885, those who learn mation is neither meaningful nor related is especially strong in individualist
quickly also forget quickly. You’ll to your experience, you will have trou- Western cultures (Jiang et al., 2019; Zhang &
retain material better if, rather than ble processing it. Imagine being asked Tullis, 2021).
cramming, you space your study, with to remember this passage (Bransford & The point to remember: You can profit
reviewing time later. How much later? Johnson, 1972): from taking time to find personal mean-
If you need to remember something The procedure is actually quite simple. ing in what you are studying.
10 days from now, practice it again First you arrange things into different
tomorrow. If you need to remember groups. Of course, one pile may be suf-
something 6 months from now, practice ficient dep ending on how much there Here is another sentence we will ask
it again a month from now (Cepeda et al., is to do. . . . After the procedure is com- you about later: The fish attacked the
2008). The spacing effect is one of psy- pleted one arranges the materials into swimmer.
chology’s most reliable findings, and different groups again. Then they can
it extends to motor skills and online be put into their appropriate places.
game performance (Stafford & Dewar, 2014). Eventually they will be used once more REtRIEVE REMEMBER
Memory researcher Henry Roediger and the whole cycle will then have ANSWERS IN APPENDIX F
to be repeated. However, that is part
(2013) sums it up: “Hundreds of stud- of life. 5. Which strategies are better for long- term
ies have shown that distributed prac- retention: cramming and rereading material,
tice leads to more durable learning.” When some students heard the or spreading out learning over time and
repeatedly testing yourself?
Distributing your learning over several paragraph you just read, without a

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