Retention

What is the point in learning something if you are going to forget it before it is useful? This what retention is all about. The [[Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve]] teaches us that [[memory]] decays as time goes on, and that when you recall something it "resets" the curve back to 0 and makes it decay slower. This is why spacing your studying helps you remember, because you'll be recalling earlier things (Also, there is an optimal point where to practice retention in order to remember things for as long as possible. This is where spaced repetition software comes in). Another method is to over-learn it. After doing something so many times that it becomes automatic makes it be over-learned and it makes it a lot more difficult to forget it (Ex. subtracting the same number from both sides, riding a bike). Another way to improve explicit memory is to use [[Mnemonics|mnemonics]] (although this can lead to poorer recall speeds). ^b9c026

See Also