Does getting it wrong help you get it right?
s. Tests help learning even if you don't do well: Taking tests enhances learning. But what happens when one cannot answer a test question—does an unsuccessful retrieval attempt impede future learning or enhance it? The authors examined this question using materials that ensured that retrieval attempts would be unsuccessful. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked fictional general-knowledge questions (e.g., “What peace treaty ended the Calumet War?”). In Experiments 3–6, participants were shown a cue word (e.g., whale) and…
1 min read
Should you get wasted the night before a big exam?
re, why not? Despite what I recently posted about drinking negatively affecting performance in college, this study says that binge drinking the night before a test doesn't negatively affect grades: In a first-of-its kind controlled experiment, researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Brown University have found that surprisingly, binge drinking the night before a test does not impact college students' test performance – although it can affect their moods, attention and reaction times. The study,…
2 minutes
Is group studying more effective?
t if you want to remember anything: Humans routinely encode and retrieve experiences in interactive, collaborative contexts. Yet much of what we know about human memory comes from research on individuals working in isolation. Some recent research has examined collaboration during retrieval, but not much is known about how collaboration during encoding affects memory. We examined this issue. Participants created episodes by elaborating on study materials alone or collaboratively, and they later performed a cued-recall task alone, with the study…
1 min read
How can you improve learning while you sleep?
onomists are fond of telling us that "people respond to incentives." It seems that's true even when we're passed out on the couch: Sleep is known to promote the consolidation of motor memories. In everyday life, typically more than 1 isolated motor skill is acquired at a time, and this possibly gives rise to interference during consolidation. Here, it is shown that reward expectancy determines the amount of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Subjects were trained on 2 different sequences of a…
2 minutes
The 4 Psychological Techniques That Increased Navy SEAL Passing Rates
er since reading The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228 I've been interested in Navy SEAL training, particularly the psychological aspects. In his blog at Psychology Today, Bakari Akil covers a History channel documentary The Brain and what it revealed about the four techniques the Navy used to increase passing rates in the elite SEAL program: Goal Setting "With goal setting the recruits were taught to set goals in extremely short chunks. For instance, one former Navy Seal…
2 minutes
Here’s What The Research Says About Whether You Could Really Become Batman
ybe, but even if you could, you wouldn't last long. In his book Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero, E. Paul Zehr discusses what it would take to become the caped crusader as well as the practical limitations inherent in being a superhero without superpowers. He was interviewed about it in Scientific American: Keeping in mind that being Batman means never losing: If you look at consecutive events where professional fighters have to defend their titles—Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Ultimate…
1 min read
