Here’s an interesting fact: students who test themselves over and over as they study, do better in tests than students who memorize for the test.
And here’s the proof: Roddy Roediger, a psychology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted research on how many images people remember. He divided his participants into three groups.
- The first group was asked to try to memorize 60 pictures for 20 minutes.
- The second group was asked to memorize 60 pictures for most of the 20 minutes.
- The third group was tested on the 60 pictures three times over the 20 minutes.
The participants returned a week later to test how well they remembered the 60 pictures.
- The first group remembered 16 out of 60 pictures.
- The second group remembered about the same as the first group, a little better.
- The third group remembered 32 out of 60 pictures, twice as many as the first group.
Scientists calls this the “testing effect” or “retrieval practice”. For us parents it basically means, we need to help our kids learn by testing themselves as they study.
Roediger said in an interview with MindShift: “What people neglected and didn’t think about was the ‘getting it out’ part.. “We don’t get information into memory just to have it sit there. We get it in to be able to use it later. … And the actual act of retrieving the information over and over, that’s what makes it retrievable when you need it.”
Here are some tips to help your kids engage in self-testing, and how you can get involved:
- Have your kids ask themselves questions about the material to make sure they understand it before they practice self-testing.
- Expose as many of the five senses as possible to the material: write it, speak it, hear it, visualize it. This will increase their memory for the material.
- Try to predict some questions that will come up in the test, write them down and then write down the answers.
- Continue to review the material until they feel they have mastered it.
- Use the self-testing frequently, so don’t just write down predicted questions once, but write down more questions and write down the answers to those, and repeat this process.
- Don’t read the notes over and over, but instead practice retrieving the information – using the senses.
- Don’t quit studying when they feel the answers come to them easily. Continue to practice retrieving the information a few more times, your kids will continue to learn on a deeper level and improve their long-term retention.
