As we progress forward in time, school becomes more challenging and rigorous even for young people each year. What many students don't know is how much psychology there is behind different study strategies. Hopefully the information we've gathered can help!

​

The information-processing perspective proposes that dreams may help sift, sort, and fix the day’s experiences in out memory (see Sleep). Sacrificing sleep to study worsens academic performance, as it's harder to understand class material or do well on test next day. Some terms that are relevant to your studying are:
Recall - retrieving information learned earlier, like on a fill-in-the-blank-test
Recognition - identifying items previously learned, like on a multiple choice test
Relearning -  an assessment of the amount of time saved when learning material again, since you learn things more quickly the when you come back to them.
 

Explicit memory, or declarative memory, is the retention of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare” with effortful processing. Effortful processing is encoding that requires attention and conscious effort. Some strategies of effortful processing are:
Chunking - organizing items into familiar, manageable units, which often occurs automatically 
Mnemonics - memory aids, especially techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices
Hierarchies - organizing broad concepts divided into narrower concepts and facts, which helps us retrieve info efficiently

See Memory for more information on these strategies.

The spacing effect is the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than massed study or practice all at the same time. The testing effect states that memory is enhanced after retrieving, rather than simply rereading info. This is also known as the retrieval practice effect or test-enhanced learning. Shallow processing is encoding on the basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words. This can be used for simple concepts or small amounts of information. Deep processing is encoding semantically, based on the meaning of words, which tends to yield the best retention. This should be used for complex material or subjects you are unfamiliar with. 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

In order to maximize your knowledge of your class material, you should rehearse repeatedly, distribute your practice among several days or weeks, and use longer intervals between each time you study.
Moreover, you should make the material meaningful and build a network of retrieval cues, which are associations you form with ideas you need to know. You can often activate these cues by taking advantage of context dependent or state-dependent memory (see Memory), and mentally recreate situation in which the original learning occurred. You can utilize mnemonic devices by making stories w vivid images and chunking info into acronyms. Test own knowledge by rehearsing and finding what you don't know, and remember that recall is stronger than recognition in helping you study.

Proactive interference is the forward-acting disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new info.
Retroactive interference is the backward-acting disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old info. Info presented in the hour before sleep suffers less retroactive interference because of minimized opportunity for interfering events. Minimize proactive and retroactive interference by studying before sleep and avoiding back-to-back study times, since the various pieces of information can interfere with each other.