PSY 3109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Test Anxiety, Sketchpad
15 May 2018
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Review of Study Skills
Goal: Long-term retention and real understanding
Practice Testing (testing-enhanced learning):
• Repeatedly generating info leads to increased memory for that info
• Practice tests can be essay style or multiple choice (but essay-style is superior)
• Test yourself on key concepts; help you commit the info to LTM; also shows you what you
do not yet know
Distributed Practice:
• Spread out your studying; 4 sessions of 30 minutes spread out over a few days is better than
1 session of 2 hours
• Cramming leads to short term retention; distributed practice lead to long term retention
• Take time each week to review key concepts from that week and previous weeks
• Each week answer "what was the most important message from this week?" and define any
key terms
Interleaved Practice:
• Massed practice would be (for example) doing a block of addition problems, then block of
subtraction, then multiplication, and then division
• Interleaved practice would be doing a mix of them all in the same block
• Won’t feel like you are learning as quickly, but you are learning for long term
• Needs more research to understand parameters
Elaborative Interrogation:
• The process of explaining why a fact is true
• Generate answers to questions of why and how
• Even if you don't get the why part right, you are more likely to remember the fact
Self-explanation:
• Involves explaining how new info is related to info that you already know
• Ask yourself questions such as: "what does this sentence mean to me?"
Both Elaborative Interrogation and Self-Explanation encourage you to think deeply and make
connections, leading to long term retention
Rereading:
• Can be helpful when you need to recall info but it often doesn’t help enhance understanding
of what you read
• Benefits are not long lasting
Highlighting:
• Really isn't helpful on its own (some evidence that it can interfere with our ability to make
connections across concepts in a chapter)
• Use as step one and then go back and test yourself on the info
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