3 tips on how to study effectively
TED TED.com
00:07
During their training, medical residents learn countless
techniques, surgeries, and procedures which they’ll
later use to save lives. Being able to remember these
skills can quite literally be a matter of life and death.
With this in mind, a 2006 research study took a class
of surgical residents learning to suture arteries and split
them into two groups. Each received the same study
materials, but one group implemented a small change
in how they studied them. And when tested one month
later, this group performed the surgeries significantly
better than the other residents.
00:45
We’ll discuss the secret to that group’s success, along
with two other highly effective study techniques which
can be applied both in and out of the classroom. But to
understand why these methods work, let's first unpack
how the brain learns and stores information.
01:02
Say you're trying to memorize the anatomy of the
heart. When you’re introduced to a new concept, the
memory is temporarily encoded in groups of neurons in
a brain area called the hippocampus.
01:15
As you continue to learn about workings of the heart in
class or study its chambers for an exam, you reactivate
these same neurons. This repeated firing strengthens
the connections between the cells, stabilizing the
memory. Gradually, the knowledge of heart anatomy is
stored long-term, which involves another brain area
known as the neocortex. How information is transferred
from short-term to long-term storage is still not
completely understood, but it’s thought to happen in
between study sessions and perhaps most crucially
during sleep. Here the new knowledge is integrated
with other related concepts you already know, such as
how to measure heart rate, or the anatomy of other
organs.
02:02
And the process doesn’t end there. Each time you
recall heart anatomy, you reactivate the long-term
memory, which makes it susceptible to change. The
knowledge can be updated, strengthened, and
reintegrated with other pieces of information. This is
where our first study technique comes in.
02:20
Testing yourself with flashcards and quizzes forces you
to actively retrieve knowledge, which updates and
strengthens the memory. Students often prefer other
study methods, like rereading textbooks and
highlighting notes. But these practices can generate a
false sense of competence, since the information is
right in front of you. Testing yourself, however, allows
you to more accurately gauge what you actually know.
02:47
But what if, while doing this, you can’t remember the
answers? Not to worry - making mistakes can actually
improve learning in the long term. It’s theorized that as
you rack your brain for the answer, you activate
relevant pieces of knowledge. Then, when the correct
answer is later revealed, the brain can better integrate
this information with what you already know.
03:10
Our second technique builds on the first. When using
flashcards to study, it's best to mix the deck with
multiple subjects. Interleaving, or mixing the concepts
you focus on in a single session, can lead to better
retention than practicing a single skill or topic at a time.
One hypothesis of why this works is that, similar to
testing, cycling through different subjects forces your
brain to temporarily forget, then retrieve information,
further strengthening the memory. You may also find
connections across the topics, and better understand
their differences.
03:46
Now that you know how and what to study, our final
technique concerns when. Spacing your review across
multiple days allows for rest and sleep between
sessions. While “offline,” the brain is actively at work,
storing and integrating knowledge in the neocortex.
So while cramming the night before the exam may
seem logical— after all, won’t the material be fresh in
your mind?— the information won’t stick around for the
long term. This brings us back to our medical residents.
Both groups studied the surgery for the same amount
of time. Yet one group’s training was crammed in a
single day, while the other more successful group’s
training was spread over four weeks.
04:32
The reason all three of these study techniques work
is because they’re designed with the brain in mind.
They complement and reinforce the incredible way the
brain works, sorting through and storing the abundance
of information it’s fed day after day.
