Memory Myth vs. Memory Truth: Enhancing Our Study Habits and Debunking Learning Styles
Memory Myth vs. Memory Truth: Enhancing Our Study Habits and Debunking Learning Styles
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Do you often find yourself forgetting that important fact mid-exam? Do you wish there was a better way to effectively learn and remember what you learn? Research shows that most people only remember about 25% percent of their experiences. This suggests that we forget the majority of details from everyday events, but the details we do recall correspond to the reality of the past. Only remembering 25% of every class we take can be sustainable, but not ideal. We curated different modes of learning that we believe can effectively optimize your memory, and significantly improve recall and cognitive abilities.
Documented Project Essays:
Program Overview: What did my test sound like?
It’s believed that everyone has a certain learning style that helps them remember information best. However, this is not exactly true. While there may be preferred methods, in actuality, information is remembered best when multiple learning styles are used. The three methods that we are focusing on are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. We will use this program to help students optimize their study time for a test which is something most people would want help on. Our topic example, for simplicity and ease of digestion, will be memorizing the United States of America map.
We will start with a quiz to get a baseline for what is already known. We will then implement a five-day program where each day focuses on using a certain learning style or doing multiple. At the end of five days will be a post-test to see what the improvement in memory is. The quiz can be found here: The U.S.: 50 States - Map Quiz Game - Seterra (geoguessr.com). After doing the pretest there will be a five-day block of memory based activities each focusing on a different learning style or styles. After the five days take the test again and see the improvement that you made.
Disclaimer: This is meant as an example of what our program entails. Five days is long enough to begin to see the merits but not long enough to get the full benefits from the program.
Project Outline: What did my test sound like?
Day 1: Visual Learning
Utilizing optic formatting can benefit an individual in learning new content. Concept maps are a great tool to connect ideas and create a narrative to aid in accurate recall. In the example of learning the geographical border of all 50 American states, the states can be broken up via region to associate which ones are neighboring one another. The goal is to find connections between all states via regional concept maps.
Day 2: Auditory Learning
Here is a video which names all 50 of the United States. For remembering the states through an auditory learning perspective, participants will listen to and sing along with the video. As you progress, try to sing the song as far as you can before starting the video. The goal is to be able is to be able to sing the song entirely without the video.
Day 3: Kinesthetic learning
Here is a map of the United States. For remembering the states through a kinesthetic learning perspective participants will print this paper out and write the name of each state within it's borders (Initials for smaller states). The goal is to try and do this off memory but as it is still practice if a labeled map is needed participants can look this up. Doing this by hand has benefits over typing it out as it engages the brain more than typing does (Keim 2013).
Day 4: MultiModal
In order to combine everything that was studied the previous 3 days, we will attempt to use methods that include the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic aspects. In order to do this, making flash cards with the states and actively using them to enhance recall is a great strategy. A good modern tool to go about this is quizlet.
Day 5: MultiModal
For the last day, its time to incorporate something fun! A Kahoot game could make studying a bit more fun, and it combines all three learning modes once again. Gathering a group of people in class and making a fun game with the states could be a fun and competitive way to solidify the knowledge you've gathered in the past 4 days. Additionally, retaking the 50 states quiz could be a great way to take stock of your learning.
PSY 314 Phase 3 Video ILNV:
About the Authors:
Isaac: I'm a graduating senior majoring in mathematics. For me, the most important thing to know about memory is that it isn't perfect. Memory is meant to be "good enough" and generalizable to many different future situations. When we expect perfection we set ourselves up for failure before we have even begun.
Nelly: I'm a sophomore majoring in psychology and minoring in chemistry. Something I've noticed in my academic career is that memorization makes up a large part of the curriculums, especially in science classes. However, with the right strategies, studying is much more manageable and recall is a lot simpler.
Victoria: I am an upcoming senior majoring in psychology, with plans to go to graduate school for clinical mental health counseling. I've never felt positively about memorizing content to just regurgitate onto an exam and forget the information afterwards. Utilizing a multimodal approach will enhance memory recall and maintain easy access to former information, which can be applied to a variety of topics and contexts.
Loudyn: I'm a fifth year with a major in kinesiology and a minor in bio and psych. Being able to perform well on tests has always been very stressful for me, but when I finally started learning how to study and memorize content more efficiently tests became a lot easier. I hope this project is able to help others do the same.
References
Tures, J. A. (2022, January 4). Practice exams for improved learning. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/practice-exams-for-improved-learning/#:~:text=Nearly%2090%20percent%20of%20students,of%20nearly%2015%20percentage%20points.
Association for Psychological Science. "Memories of past events retain remarkable fidelity even as we age." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 November 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201124150838.htm>.
Kiem, B. (2013). "The Science of Handwriting." Scientific American. The Science of Handwriting | Scientific American
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