September 8th, 2022

Intro to Psychology

What are the most effective ways to study?

Rereading

  • Most studies are on massed rereading (back-to-back), which is easier to study, not spaced rereading.
    • This is low ecological validity (how real a study’s scenario is)

Note-taking

  • Laptop note-takers do more verbatim notes, handwritten can’t keep up so they don’t
  • Laptop vs. handwritten were equal on factual recall
  • Handwritten performs better on conceptual test
  • Hand-writing notes seems to force active learning

Outlining

  • Teacher-generated outlines
    • Skeletal (incomplete) outlines better than complete outlines or transcripts
  • Learner-generated outlines
    • Read through entire text, then outline

Flash cards

  • This is called retrieval practice
  • Recalling information helps consolidate it
  • Don’t be “done” with a card until you get it right 3 times

Listening to music while studying

  • Listening to pop music hampers the ability to answer reading comprehension questions (Anderson & Fuller, 2010)
  • Memory is best under silence, next is music without lyrics, worst is music with lyrics
  • Music affects introverts more negatively than extroverts