One scientific insight for curriculum design

 Buttercup and dandelion clock.

One scientific insight for curriculum design

Joe Kirby

I’ve made the case before that our curriculum and assessment isn’t designed with memory in mind. Here’s what I spoke about at ResearchEd York: what we can do to improve

how much our pupils remember of what they’ve learned.

There’s a mismatch between what science suggests and what schools do on this.

A century of scientific study converges on a key insight for our design of curriculum and assessment: an insight that can be put work immediately, widely, at no cost, and to great effect.

 

In the scientific literature there are hundreds (if not thousands!) of studies on this,

some from as early as 1907, and the research in the last decade is particularly prolific:

In 2013, five cognitive scientists (Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, Willingham 2013)

collated hundreds such studies and showed that practice testing

has a higher utility for retention and learning than other techniques:

Cognitive psychologists (Roediger, Putnam and Smith 2011) have summarised from this research

the many benefits of low-stakes or no-stakes testing:

The scientists’ review of the vast literature shows that these benefits are enduring

(Dunlosky, et al, 2013):

The questions to ask of this research as a teacher are:

what’s the optimal format and frequency of low-stakes testing or retrieval practice?

For simplicity, I’ll refer to this as quizzing, as Roediger, McDaniel and others do in their work.

Applied research suggests multiple-choice questions are as effective as short-answer questions.

The latest research study is as recent as March 2014,

so this is a fast-evolving field, and one to keep an eye on.

There’s also a question of whether regular frequency or longer spacing is more important:

It’s encouraging that the research evidence resonates with the work of successful school leaders

like Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, who works in over 1,000 schools with 90% poverty rates

and presided over dramatic academic achievement:

Now, over the last decade, eleven cognitive psychologists have taken over a hundred years

of laboratory research on the testing effect and applied it to classrooms and subject curricula.

Here’s what they recommend:

Use frequent quizzing: testing interrupts forgetting

Roll forward into each successive quiz questions on work from the previous term.

Design quizzing to reach back to concepts and learning covered earlier in the term,

so retrieval practice continues and learning is cumulative.

Frequent low-stakes quizzes in class helps the instructor verify that students

are in fact learning as well as they appear to be and reveal the areas where extra attention

is needed. Cumulative quizzing is powerful for consolidating learning

and concepts from one stage of a course into new material encountered later.

Simply including one test retrieval practice in a class yields a large improvement in final exam scores, and gains continue to increase as the frequency of testing increases.

Effortful retrieval makes for stronger learning and retention. The greater the effort to retrieve learning, *provided that you succeed*, the more learning is strengthened by retrieval.

In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool

One of the best habits to instil in a learner is regular self-quizzing.

As far as I know, very few schools are applying these insights of cognitive psychology

in their curriculum and assessment systems. Very few design systematically cumulative tests.

Here’s a very rough ‘before and after’ snapshot of what a Year 7 curriculum and assessment system might look like when changed to put frequent, cumulative retrieval practice at its heart:

In summary:

Repeated retrieval improves long-term memory retention

Practice testing outperforms often-used techniques like highlighting and summarising

Quizzing has several benefits for memory and motivation

The benefits of quizzing for memory retention are long-lasting

The scientific research chimes with expert experience

There’s a mismatch between what schools do and what the science suggests

Cumulative revisiting can improve our curriculum design

Recent research is exploring the optimal format and frequency of quizzes

I would like to do a much more extensive literature review on this,

but for now here are twelve of the papers that I think are useful:

Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan & Willingham 2011.  

Repeated Retrieval Is the Key to Long-Term Retention. Karpicke & Roediger 2007

Retrieval practice is critical in long-term retention. Roediger & Butler 2010

Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention.Roediger & Karpicke 2006

Test-Enhanced Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom: The Effects of Quiz Frequency and Placement. McDaniel, Agarwal, Huelser, McDermott & Roediger 2011

Test-Enhanced Learning in the Classroom: Long-Term Improvements From Quizzing. Roediger et al 2011

Generalising test-enhanced learning from the laboratory to the classroom. McDaniel et al 2011

Quizzing promotes transfer in science exams. McDaniel 2011

The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Roediger & Karpicke 2006

Both multiple-choice and short-answer quizzes enhance later exam performance in middle and high school classes. McDermott 2014

Retrieval practice with short-answer, multiple-choice, and hybrid tests.Smith & Karpicke 2013

Repeated Testing Produces Superior Transfer of Learning Relative to Repeated Studying Butler, 2010

https://pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/scientificcurriculumdesign/

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneously recall – or pass that exam.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com        gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com             take advantage of business experience and expertise.

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com       just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Why students don’t remember what they’ve learned. Cheat codes to intelligence: touchpaper #7

Cheat codes to intelligence: touchpaper #7

Joe Kirby

I’ve asked before why students don’t remember what they’ve learned: how we design instruction, the curriculum and assessment plays a large part.

On first discovering cognitive science, Kris Boulton said it was “like being given the cheat codes to intelligence”. The models of memory and the mind in seminal texts like Dan Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School, the models of how we learn and the insights for instruction: this research has a lot to offer teachers.

Touchpaper problem #7 is about retaining content in long-term memory. If cognitive scientists are correct, that ‘if nothing has been retained in long-term memory, nothing has been learned,’ this is a key issue for teachers.

Our team (Helene, Mark, Tim, Ben, Lucy, Jackie and I) tried in the touchpaper working party to turn what we know from cognitive science into what teachers can do about it, to work out exactly what we still need to know. Mark’s superb summary and collation of the research is here.

As a starting point, beginning with the end in mind, we set ourselves the simple constraint of one page. If we had one page that distilled and summarised the research for the classroom, we asked, what would we like teachers to have access to, free, online and neatly packaged?

So here it is.

What do we know about how memory works? What can teachers can do about it?

The research article that best synthesises a century of scientific research evidence is by five cognitive scientists: Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan and Willingham.

Here are their summaries of the two most effective strategies for retention, spacing or the distributed practice effect, and retrieving or the testing effect:

Distributed practice effect

Spreading of study across multiple, spaced, distributed sessions rather than cramming study into single sessions is highly effective for learning and retention.

Examples

Reviewing over 250 studies, Cepeda et al (2006) showed overall students recall more after spaced study (47%) than massed study (37%). Lag effects show the advantage of spacing with longer intervals over spacing with shorter intervals between practice sessions.

Conditions

The schedule most strongly influences the benefits of distributed practice.

Schedule: How are learning episodes best spaced? Conditions with the most intersession forgetting yielded the greatest long-term retention: gaps of 30 days are shown to be better for learning than gaps of 1 day. Intervals of one month or more may be ideal for studying core content that needs to be retained for cumulative assessments.

Format: the distributed-practice effect works across free recall, multiple-choice questions and short-answer questions.

Utility

Practice testing has a high utility across learning conditions (reading, listening, writing etc), student characteristics (age, ability & prior knowledge), materials (problems, texts and questions across subjects) and tasks (recall, problem-solving and comprehension).

Testing effect

More than 100 years of research has yielded several hundred experiments showing that practice testing improves learning and retention. Practice testing is low-stakes or no-stakes, which pupils may even use on their own, outside class.

Examples

For example, final-test performance of word pairs is better for those that practice-tested (53% vs 36% after 10 minutes 35% vs 4% after one week).

Another instance is that 4 blocks of study with practice tests outperformed 8 blocks of study without (39% vs 17%).

Conditions

How is testing best designed for retention? Format, dosage and timing strongly influence the benefits of practice testing.

On format, practice tests that require more generative responses (recall, short-answer) are more effective than those that require less generative responses (fill in the blank, recognition).

On dosage, more is better: final-test performance improves as the number of correct responses during practice increases, albeit with some diminishing returns as higher criterion levels are achieved.

On timing, longer is better: sizable benefits are observed when repeated tests are spaced: longer lags produce greater benefits. Testing effects are larger when final tests are given after longer delays, including intervals of 4 weeks, 4 months, 8 months, 11 months and even 1-5 years.

Practice testing outperforms restudying. The advantage of practice testing with feedback over restudy is extremely robust. Shorter and more frequent tests (one a week) are more effective than longer and less frequent (once every six weeks).

Distributed practice testing is more effective for retention than distributed practice alone.

Utility

Practice testing has a high utility across formats, materials, learner ages, learner abilities, outcome measures and retention intervals. It is the most effective learning technique in the research literature, according to these five cognitive scientists.

***

So, what do we still need to know? How can we guide research with the questions we want solved? As the cognitive scientists say, these ‘effective techniques are under-utilised’ by teachers and students, and ‘popular techniques (re-reading, highlighting) are ineffective’. They recognise the ‘disconnect between research and practice’ and say that ‘easy-to-use versions of the most promising techniques should be developed and evaluated in controlled investigations in educationally representative settings.’

As a starting point, the question we got onto by the end of the touchpaper party was: what is the optimal frequency and type of quiz for students to best retain content?

Much is still to be done: in particular, as Dr Becky Allen suggests, a much more extensive literature review.

***

As a very brief starting point, and to see how well the findings of cognitive science align, it’s worth summarising some key research papers in a single sentence:

Willingham

Distributing studying over time, overlearning (continuing to study even after knowing the material), and testing frequent self-testing are the most important ways to improve students’ memory.

Bjork

Spacing rather than massing practice, interleaving rather than blocking content, andtesting as retrieval to aid future recall are the best ways of enhancing learning.

Dunlosky et al

A century of research shows that practice testing (low-stakes quizzing) anddistributed practice (spaced, spread out study) are the most effective techniques for learning, evidenced across ages, abilities, tasks and contexts.

Cepeda et  al

A century of research evidence shows that cumulative review and increasing the gap between study episodes can enhance retention.

debrakidd says:

This is really interesting Joe – is there any follow up research to check whether learning had been retained after the final course exam? i.e. if it was ‘dumped’ after it was no longer deemed to be useful?

Kristopher Boulton (@Kris_Boulton) says:

I haven’t read the post yet, but just off the top of my head, I think that kind of ‘dumping’ typically happens due to cramming, i.e. building short-term retrieval strength of memories but not their storage strength. It’s not the immediate sense of utility of the knowledge that guarantees its later retrieval, but its ‘retrieval strength;’ this degrades much more slowly over time (and is more readily rebuilt) if ‘storage strength’ is high.

Storage strength can only be built over a long period of time.

Tom Berend says:

Thank you. Dunlofsky et al. is a 50-page paper, it’s going to take a while to absorb. But it seems that there are at least one more element you could add: ATTENTION, which is nicely described in Logan’s paper:http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/logan/Logan_2002_PR.pdf

According to Instance Theory, forming a neural connection is conditional on having sufficient attention, it’s an all-or-nothing event and it only happens when there is sufficient focus. The consequence for the classroom is that learning should take place with without distractions, background noise, competing ideas, fatigue, or discomforts.

Of course, you want to lay down multiple connections, and assess progress. Logan argues that Instance Theory predicts a learning curve (power law curve of practice) merely as a consequence of forming connections. This lets you measure learning in some cases – simply test until the curve flattens out sufficiently.

michaelslav says:

Hi Joe (and Helene, Mark, Tim, Ben, Lucy and Jackie!),

Thank you for a phenomenal post. I had not encountered the http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/cogscilearning/dunloskiimprovingstudentlearning.pdf article that you linked to before and it is a source of immense interest. Did your discussions touch at all on how research such as this might inform a course of teacher training or CPD? It seems that the 10 techniques reviewed in the article might make for 5/6 excellent CPD sessions of their own right!

Thanks again,
Michael

Rory says:

Here’s a 5-minute audio that solves a great deal of the problem of retention:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YiF0Bajw2gawCVLjeLE0HPC7k350x4y1LLlSlvILbFI

Rory says:

The problem with what’s being learned is that it’s all overwritten by new material almost instantly. This is especially true of information-rich information like video. I have a 5-minute audio that solves a great deal of this problem:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YiF0Bajw2gawCVLjeLE0HPC7k350x4y1LLlSlvILbFI

middle age develop dementia says:

I do not create many responses, however i did some searching and wound up here Cheat codes to intelligence:
touchpaper#7 | Pragmatic Education. 

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube 

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com               which takes advantage of the experience and expertise of others.

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Whatever has Mountain Dew got to do with Memory, Learning and Confidence?

I chose my photo of a pile of gigantic tyres because they fit in entirely with today’s topic.

Tyres come in all sorts of different sizes and types for specific purposes

~ purpose/intent is the driving force of TCR and it is continually checked and refined

for your needs of the material being read to be read efficiently

~ hence the different tread for different situations.

You use consistent patterns when TCR that are suitable for your current requirements.

As an individual you have the ability to be flexible and mix and match to pile up your memory

and finally the important point is that memory is built up in layers.

Whatever has Mountain Dew got to do with Memory, Learning and Confidence?

Mountain Dew was his language, his experience, his security.

My computer programmes, chocolate, purchased and created aids belonged to the confused world.

Memory.

While memory is built up in layers it is stored in bits in apparently random places

and re-created each time it is recalled.

I understand that a CD or DVD does not store information in a sequential pattern

but in various segments across the disk; and yet the music or film is recalled in perfect order.

If you load information: a,b,c,d,e,f,g onto a disk and a little late your delete b, c and f then the next pieces of information you load will fill up those empty spaces first and not necessarily in linear order.

I think that this is one of the ways that a creative combination of ideas can emerge – eureka!

Additionally you can think of memory recall as a chain that has been build up of sequences.

If a link or segment is missing or defective then the whole cannot be recalled.

In such I cases I would say, “I read something somewhere that said something along the lines of ….”

Then they say that if you want to really know a subject then you teach it. :)

Into this statement is built in the detailed learning of the subject so that you can explain

or demonstrate it externally and that repetition of knowledge builds with repeated practice.

Repetition or habit is one of five proposed learning gateways to the mind.

For these reasons when Turbo Charged Reading you pour a whole book into your innermind

in a few minutes then you give your new and growing neurons time to collate, cross reference 

and highlight the information you want at this point in time before bringing this required information into your conscious working mind. Therefore from your very first contact with this information, 

either printed or from an electronic screen, you do so in sequence

with each layer building on the last and so being an efficient use of your time

as you do not elicit information that is not to be used at this time.

Also with each successful layer followed you are building confidence and long term memory.

When discussing memory there is the state and none state theory of memory.

Where is memory is stored; is it confined within your scull or in every cell of your body?

However, right now we are concerned with the memorising of information, clearly and long term.

Does memory come before learning?

I leave that for you to debate.

Learning is acquired in layers, by process and practice leading to increasing confidence.

Confidence is being able to perform a skill whereas self esteem is having a secure inner regard.

Learning can enter the mind / body by a proposed five routes.

Trauma, habit, hero worship (think pop stars, advertisements etc), authority figures (think parents, law, religion etc) and alpha (in hypnotherapy we use the authority of the self during the alpha state 

to access the other four areas of learning.)

The focused learning state in any area of life uses the Alpha wave state in the brain

as concentration, absorption, fascination, the reduction of extraneous thoughts.

The learning state of alpha is natural and starts to initiate as soon as you close your eyes

or focus increasingly inwards on a subject, novel, film, conversation etc.

In doing any of these activities you could be considered to be in an enhanced environment.

Each time you experience something your brain immediately starts laying down the foundations

for its memory/recall and this requires a new neural network – or extra space on the CD.

This is a purely physical matter; think of someone who’s been confined to bed

and you recognise that their muscles atrophy or an elderly person who’s hormones have altered

and therefore does not have the capacity of the young or think of a person who’s family history indicates a ‘weak’ heart; if any of these people increase their physical exercise 

then new muscles and veins etc are created.

Similarly the great ‘they’ took a number of mice from their boring cage and put them into a cage 

with interesting activities. The enhanced activity mice stayed in this enriched environment

for shorter and shorter periods of time so that eventually the scientists found that

the building of neural networks started as soon as the mice entered the enriched environment.

It is not simply a case of use it or lose it but also of continuing or starting to build your abilities.

With Turbo Charged Reading after you have poured all that information into your inner mind

and submitted a request for certain information that satisfied your purpose to be recalled

for your first layer of learning recall; you then get out of the way and give your neural network

the chance to organise itself and create the necessary new neurons to satisfy your purpose.

Confidence.

I was engaged to help a 13 year old get past his problems with algebra 

(the fact that algebra is a complete mystery to me is irrelevant).

My intent/purpose was to find the point just before his confusion; that being the point of his security.

I found fractions as the first point of insecurity, the frightening quagmire with no way out.

I used my skills, my ingenuity and we got nowhere. I then grabbed the empty bottles of Mountain Dew he and his father had been drinking and put a fraction of water in one of them.

Mountain Dew was safe, it was part of his understanding and it had nothing to do with fractions.

Light dawned and very rapidly he was able to bring into his confidence 

the things his teachers had been trying to teach him.

I find it interesting that when you work with critical incident de-briefing you take the person

back to their point of confidence before the trauma, or series of little traumas,

and ‘lock’ them into their confidence. Another description of this is to ‘anchor’ them

in the safe experience of themselves before the distressing incident; or the last straw

that broke the camel’s back if there has been a series of accumulating stresses.

How is this expressed in Turbo Charged Reading?

By building up the sequence of Turbo Charged Reading using the language

with which you are most familiar, expressed as ‘your primary and secondary learning modalities’.

In ‘English’ that means starting with the simple and building into the more detailed how-tos

of each stage: You pour the written information into your inner mind thus bypassing your eyes

and conscious mind. Unexpectedly to your experience and expectation, at this stage,

the information is unavailable to you; you have no earthly idea of what you have read 

as its bypassed your conscious mind and is now part of your inner knowing – your store 

of information. You then do nothing while you let your innermind create the necessary neurons 

that catalogue the information read and cross reference it with what you already know and you create new music or beer from what you already know but have not combined in that way before.

Finally you bring the information that you require at this moment into your conscious awareness.

These sequences are then built upon as your knowledge (learning), security (confidence)

and memory (recall) are extended (enhanced).

The usual last way of eliciting and recording the information you wish from your written material

is to create a mind map and mind maps are an excellent and efficient way

for most people to store and recall information.

Therefore I start the first Success Level of the five Turbo Charged Reading levels

by creating mind maps or in this case ‘Mind Tress’ during our first session.

As a mind map covers the major learning styles (your safe language/experience) of being visual

and I’ve seen some mind maps that are works of art.

Some people prefer their ‘mind maps’ in the business process mapping format or as bullet points.

For those who learn best by hearing I tell stories that builds up dialogue in your mind 

and these stories are copied with a few words onto the mind map.

All TCR Success Level written work is repeated as MP3s for convenience

and for those who prefer to listen as opposed to reading at this point .

For the kiensthetic and those who like the security of notes and handouts you are physically building up a representation of your learning in a way that satisfies your personal experience 

while encompassing the necessary structure of the learning process.

TCR uses the body as part of the reading process.

For those of you who use olfactory and gustatory points of reference

I’m afraid that you’ll have to add these memory aids yourself and are encouraged to do so

as research values these modalities, especially for revision and exams.

So with our Turbo Charged Reading partnership we start with the end in mind

and build in everything to ensure your success.

Turbo Charged Reading: Read fast>>>Remember all>>>Years later

You can TCR software and engineering manuals for spontaneously recall – or pass that exam.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube  

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com               which takes advantage of the experience and expertise of others.

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com        just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.

Remember more of what you read and hear: 6 research-tested ways to improve your memory.

Remember more of what you read and hear:

6 research-tested ways to improve your memory.

Written by Belle Beth Cooper

We’ve looked at a few different strategies to help remember the names of people you meet 

on the Buffer blog before, but there’s lots to say about memory.

It turns out that science is continually finding new connections between simple things we can do

every day and an improvement in our general memory capacity.

Memory is a complicated process that’s made up of a few different brain activities.

Here’s a simplified version to help us understand how the process takes place:

1. Creating a memory.
Our brain sends signals in a particular pattern associated with the event we’re experiencing
and creates connections between our neurons, called synapses.

2. Consolidating the memory.

If we didn’t do anything further, that memory would fall right out of our heads again. 

Consolidation is the process of committing it to long-term memory so we can recall it later. 

A lot of this process happens while we’re sleeping, as our brains recreate that same pattern 

of brain activity to strengthen the synapses we created earlier.

3. Recalling the memory

This is what most of us think of when we talk about memory, or especially memory loss. 

Recalling the memory is easier if it’s been strengthened over time, and each time we do so, 

we run through that same pattern of brain activity again, making it a little stronger.

Memory loss is a normal part of aging, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take action to slow it down 

a little. Let’s take a look at some of the ways research has found to keep our memories around 

as long as possible.1. Meditate to improve your working memory Working memory, 

which is a bit like the brain’s notepad, is where new information is held temporarily. 

When you learn someone’s name or hear the address of a place you’re going to, 

you hang on to those details in working memory until you’re done with them.

If they’re not useful anymore, you let go of them entirely. 

If they are, you commit them to long-term memory where they can be strengthened and recalled later.

Working memory is something we use every day, and it makes our lives a lot easier 

when it’s stronger. For most adults, the maximum we can hold in our working memory 

is about seven items, but if you’re not quite using your working memory to its max capacity, 

meditation is one thing you can try to strengthen it.

Research has shown that participants with no experience in mindfulness meditation can improve their memory recall in just eight weeks. Meditation, with its power to help us concentrate, has also been shown to improve improve standardized test scores and working memory abilities after just two weeks.

Why does meditation benefit memory? It’s somewhat counterintuitive. 

During meditation, our brains stop processing information as actively as they normally would.

In the image below you can see how the beta waves (shown in bright colors on the left), 

which indicate that our brains are processing information, 

are dramatically reduced during meditation (on the right).

2. Drink coffee to improve your memory consolidation.
Whether caffeine can improve memory if taken before learning something new is debatable. 

Most research has found little-to-no effect from ingesting caffeine prior to creating new memories.
One recent study, however, found that taking a caffeine pill after a learning task actually improved
memory recall up to 24 hours later.

Participants memorized a set of images, and were later tested by viewing the same images (targets),
similar images (lures) and completely different images (foils). The task was to pick out which 

were the exact pictures they had memorized, without being tricked by the lures which were very similar. This is a process called pattern separation, which, according to the researchers, reflects a “deeper level of memory retention.”

The researchers in this study focused on the effects of caffeine on memory consolidation:

the process of strengthening the memories we’ve created. This is why they believe there were effects when caffeine was ingested after the learning task, rather than before.

3. Eat berries for better long-term memory.
Another diet-related effect on memory is the mounting research that eating berries

can help to stave off memory decline.
A study from the University of Reading and the Peninsula Medical School found that supplementing 

a normal diet with blueberries for twelve weeks improved performance on spatial working memory tasks. The effects started just three weeks in and continued for the length of the study.

A long-term berry study that tested the memory of female nurses who were over 70 years old 

found that those who had regularly eaten at least two servings of strawberries or blueberries each week had a moderate reduction in memory decline. (The effects of strawberries might be debatable, though, since that study was partly funded by the California Strawberry Commission and another study focusing on strawberries suggested that you’d need to eat roughly 10 pounds of strawberries per day to see any effect). 

More research is needed in this area, but science is getting closer to understanding how 

berries might affect our brains. In particular, blueberries are known for being high in flavanoids, 

which appear to strengthen existing connections in the brain. That could explain why they’re beneficial for long-term memory.

4. Exercise to improve your memory recall.
Studies in both rat and human brains have shown that regular exercise can improve memory recall. 

Fitness in older adults has even been proven to slow the decline of memory without the aid 

of continued regular exercise. 

In particular, studies show that regular exercise can improve spatial memory, 

so it’s not necessarily a way to improve all kinds of memory recall.

Of course, the benefits of exercise are numerous, but for the brain in particular, regular exercise has been shown to improve cognitive abilities beyond memory. So if you’re looking for a way to stay sharp mentally, taking a walk could be the answer. See how a quick walk ignites the brain in the scan below:

                                          

5. Chew gum to make stronger memories.
Another easy method to try that could improve your memory is chewing gum while you learn 

new things. There’s been some contradictory research around this topic, so it’s not a solid bet,

but a study published last year showed that participants who completed a memory recall task 

were more accurate and had higher reaction times if they chewed gum during the study.

One reason that chewing gum might affect our memory recall is that it increases activity in the hippocampus, an important area of the brain for memory. It’s still unclear why this happens, though.

Another theory focuses on the increase of oxygen from chewing gum, which can help with focus

and attention. This could mean we’re creating stronger connections in the brain as we learn 

new things while chewing gum. One study found that participants who chewed gum during learning and memory tests had higher heart rate levels than control groups, which can also lead to 

more oxygen flowing to the brain.

6. Sleep more to consolidate your memories. 
Sleep has proven to be one of the most important elements in having a good memory. 

Since sleep is when most of our memory consolidation process occurs, 

it makes sense that without enough sleep we’re going to struggle to remember the things 

we’ve learned. Even a short nap can improve your memory recall.

In one study, participants memorized illustrated cards to test their memory strength. 

After memorizing a set of cards, they had a 40-minute break wherein one group napped, 

and the other stayed awake. After the break, both groups were tested on their memory of the cards – the group who had napped performed better:

Much to the surprise of the researchers, the sleep group performed significantly better, 

retaining on average 85 percent of the patterns, compared to 60 percent for those 

who had remained awake.

Apparently, napping actually helps our brain to solidify memories:
Research indicates that when memory is first recorded in the brain—in the hippocampus, 

to be specific— it’s still “fragile” and easily forgotten, especially if the brain is asked to memorize

more things. Napping, it seems, pushes memories to the neocortex, the brain’s “more permanent storage,” preventing them from being “overwritten.”

Not only is sleep after learning a critical part of the memory creation process, 

but sleep before learning something new is important as well. 

Research has found that sleep deprivation can affect our ability to commit new things to memory 

and consolidate any new memories we create. 

Have you tried any of these methods for improving your memory? 

What works best for you? Let us know in the comments.

If you liked this post, you might also like Inactivity and the Brain: Why Exercise is More Important than Ever and The Secret to Creativity, Intelligence, and Scientific Thinking: Being Able to Make Connections.

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