The advice in this article were largely inspired by a series of lectures given by Professor Stanislas Dehaene at the College de France on memory and its optimization.
1) Focus on your subject of study.
For example, playing during your sleep a recording of what you wish to study has no effect if you never studied that subject matter before. It is important to be awake and to place yourself in conditions where distractions are minimal. For example, studying with television in the background is not very effective.
2) Strive to understand or make sense of the materials.
For example, if you are asked to learn the phrase
"The boy threw his popcorn because the cage broke."
Your ability to remember this sentence will be much better if you are given the following hint:
"Lion"
In fact, now you understand why the cage is broken and why popcorn has been spilled. It will now be much easier to remember that phrase.
Your memory of this sentence will, however, be even better if you had not been given the indication right away and if you were first left guessing why the cage was broken and why the popcorn was spilled.
3) Incorporate testing periods in your study program.
The brain learns best when it realizes that it is in error and when it receives the correct answer as feedback to its error. We must therefore test ourselves on a regular basis in order to generates these mistakes as often as possible during study and after each mistake, we must check what the right answer was. Take the example of a vocabulary list that takes 30 minutes to be read carefully. It is better to spend an hour on these words by studying the list once but trying to guess the translation of each word before looking at the translation than to read the list of words twice attentively but without testing.
4) Sleeping breaks are essential.
a. Before an examination
Memory is consolidated during sleep. The night before an exam, you get better results by studying once a material for 6 hours and then sleeping six hours than by studying the matter twice (in 12 hours) without sleep before going to the exam. Also, if you study the morning for a test taking place in the afternoon, it is recommended to take a nap between the study session and the test.
b. Between two study sessions of the same material
It is more efficient to separate your study sessions of the same material by at least one night. For example, it is better to study two different materials or two chapters on the same day (one in the morning, one in the afternoon) and to repeat that same study pattern the next day than to study a first material or chapter twice on the same day and to study the next material or chapter on the next day.
c. After a day preferably solely devoted to the study
Sleep consolidates memories while giving priority to the most important events of the day. A study period is a period of concentration, it is an important event in a day. Watch Out! Watching a movie or playing a video game will also be considered an important event, not only because it also focuses your attention but also because it is rich emotionally. This kind of activity is going to compete with your study material during your sleep. So it is better to do nothing too intense or captivating during study days.
d. Using smells
Select a fragrance to perfume the pages of your study material and perfume your room with the same fragrance. While you sleep, the smell will lead your brain to spend more time on the events related to that fragrance (your study material) than on events that are not related to that fragrance (it is counterproductive to wear this perfume on yourself the whole day). Sounds can be used in the same manner. For example, using the same background music for studying and for sleeping. Similarly, a recording of the study material or words reminding the study material can be played at night but beware, there is a risk of disrupting your sleep by causing for instance small awakenings. Also, playing a record of your study material is useless if you never studied it before.
5) Carefully plan your study sessions
Watch Out! Maximizing memory in the moment of the study session is not necessarily maximizing long-term retention! So you will sometimes develop radically wrong opinions on the best way to study.
It is important to space your study sessions of the same material. As we have seen in point 4b, it is better to space two study sessions of the same material by an interval of at least one night. However, spacing your study sessions is also beneficial within one day of study. For example, it is more effective to space two study sessions of the same material with an hour interval than with a 5 minutes interval.
Let us now see some very concrete cases:
a) If you only want to pass the exam without worrying about retaining the material for the long term and if you have not taken the course:
1. If you have the time to study only once: you must study the day before,
2. If you have the time to study twice, you must study the day before and the day before that day,
...and so on.
This type of study is effective for an exam. However, beware that this strategy is the worse possible if you wish long term retention of what you studied, study sessions being too close together. The time commitment is large for a poor outcome in the long term.
b) If you want to get the most value for your time and / or study for the long term:
The optimal strategy will depend on what you mean by long term.
If you have studied the material for the first time today (e.g. you had your course today), you'll have an exam in x days and you have the time to make a single revision, the revision should be done the day before.
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However, if you have the time to do two revisions, make a first revision in (x / 7) days and the second revision the day before the exam. For example, if you have an exam in 30 days make your first revision in 4 days and a second revision on the day before the exam.
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It will be noted that once the first revision is scheduled and the last revision is scheduled for the day before the exam, the perfect time to do an additional revision will be (30d-4d) / 7, that is to say again 4 days after the first revision
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And the perfect time to add one more revision will be (26j-4d) / 7, that is to say, three days after the previous one.
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Note that as we get closer to the exam, revisions get closer to one another. These will therefore become less and less effective for long-term retention. This type of method is a good compromise between exam success and retention of the material over the long term. Even for the unambitious student, this type of strategy is interesting because it allows quite some retention of the study material if it is re-tested or useful for another exam along the line.
By cons, if you have studied the material for the first time today, and you do not know when you will need to know this material (for example, you study for fun and no examination is expected), make revisions increasingly spaced. For example, the next day, then a week later, then a month later, then three months later, etc. This will maximize the long-term retention.
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