Elaboration Making memories meaningful

ELABORATION IMPROVES MEMORY by making connections between new informa­tion and prior knowledge.

The outcome of the following scenario should be familiar. Sandra discov­ered a potential client while shopping at the mall. As they parted, the client said, "Call me at 422-8888." Sandra eagerly repeated the phone number while walking back to her car. On the way, a passerby asked for the location of a restroom. After answering the passerby, Sandra realized she had utterly for­gotten the phone number she had just been repeating so successfully.

Poor Sandra-she should have tried to make meaningful patterns of the numbers. For example, "This would be my fourth client; 4 divided by 2 makes 2 (422), and adding them up makes 8, of which there are 4 again (8888)." By only repeating the phone number, Sandra did nothing to commit the number to long-term memory. Elaboration helps by actively connecting new ideas to ideas that are already in long-term memory, for example, by associating the phone number with the knowledge that this would have been her fourth client, and that 4 + 2 = 2. It is a basic truth worth memorizing: repeating something over and over keeps it in your mind fleetingly, whereas con­necting new information to what you already know creates a memory. So, how will you remember this truth?

52

FROM: Schwartz, D. L., Tsang, J. M., & Blair, K. P. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn: 26 scientifically proven approaches, how they work, and when to use them. WW Norton & Company.

E IS FOR ELABORATION I 53

I. How Works

The human body has many different memory systems, each specializing in a

different type of information. The immune system, for example, has a mem­

ory. When people receive bone marrow transplants, doctors destroy the existing marrow. The immune system "forgets" all the diseases it has encountered, and it needs to relearn from (painful) experience. The immune system is the poster

child for the wisdom that it is much more efficient to remember a solution than

figure it out afresh. At the same time, the immune system also cautions us that memory is insufficient for adaptive behavior, because we still need to handle

novel problems (new germs) for which we have no exact memories. Elaboration is a strategy specialized for memorizing declarative informa­

tion-things about which one can talk. The amount of declarative infor­mation that people know is astonishing. Newspaper articles, movies, a bully

from second grade, sundry math facts, your friend's preferences, alphabeti­

cal order, favorite dinners-it's all in there. It is a good thing people do not remember everything at once! The great trick of memory is to remember the

right thing at the right time. Elaboration helps. To understand how elaboration works, we need to consider two of our

many memory systems. One is called working memory. It enables the con­scious manipulation of information, for example, when thinking through a

problem. Working memory has only temporary storage. Information moves

ENCODING

Think of password in ~

working memory

Elaborate in long-term memory

RETRIEVAL

Search Memory cue ~ long-term ~ Successful

retrieval memory

Figure E.1. The benefits of elaborative encoding for retrieval. Elaboration makes connec­

tions between an idea in working memory and long-term memory. During retrieval, the

increased pathways among ideas improve the chances that the memory will be found.

54 I THE ABCs OF HOW WE LEARN

in and out of working memory depending on the problem at hand. Working

memory cannot hold information very long, so people need to keep refresh­

ing the information, for example, by repeating the name of a person they just

met. Refreshing the information keeps it available for immediate processing

in working memory, but it is a poor technique for storing the information for

later use. To file the information away for later use, people need to encode

it in long-term memory. Long-term memory holds information indefinitely.

Encoding is only half the story, however. To use the stored information, peo­

ple need to be able to retrieve it from long-term memory to help solve prob­

lems and answer questions using their working memory.

Figure E. l shows the distinction between encoding and retrieval. The left

side, which is a massive simplification of what goes on in the brain, shows

how someone might use elaboration to remember the password to a Bank of

America online account. The elaboration connects both the bank's name and

the password (Bald&Bold) to the idea of America, using the associated ideas

of brave and eagles.

The right side of Figure E.1 shows the payoff of elaboration. Retrieval

is a process of spreading activation. Working memory makes a request of

long-term memory, such as "What is my Bank of America password?" This

activates a long-term memory, such as America. The activation in America

cascades across associated ideas. The activation spreads through several con­

nections that lead to the desired memories, which become sufficiently active

that rhey become available to working memory.

Think(!{ password in

working memory

ENCODING

' •@) I ~ ' ,

No elaboration in long-term

memory

RETRIEVAL

' ~: '

,

Search

Memory cue -- long-term ~

memory

Failed retrieval

Figure E.2. What happens when people do not use elaboration. During encoding, the

new ideas (Bald and Bold) do not connect with other ideas in long-term memory. During

retrieval, there is no path back to the original ideas, so they cannot be found in memory.

E IS FOR ELABORATION j 55

Figure E.2 shows what happens when people do not elaborate new infor­

mation. Even though the information may make its way to long-term mem­ory, it remains unconnected to any other ideas. It is hard to search for the memories, because there are no connections to them. As an analogy, it is much easier to find documents in a well-organized filing system than a box filled with mounds of paper.

The formal representation of memory networks can become very compli­cated. The basic mechanism is simple-ideas that fire together wire together, and ideas that wire together fire together. Elaboration increases the chances that one idea will fire another idea you want to remember.

to

Elaboration is useful for memorizing meaningful material, including new vocabulary words, sentences, people's names, directions, or even phone num­bers. Ironically, elaboration does not need to be very elaborate to make a

difference. In one study, participants had to memorize one hundred words

(Tresselt & Mayzner, 1960). There were three conditions: cross out the vow­els, copy the words, and judge the degree to which each word was an instance

of the concept "economic" (e.g., poem would be low, and credit would be high). When asked to remember the words, participants in the judge con­

dition did twice as well as the copy condition and four times as well as the cross-out-vowels condition.

If the goal is to memorize, elaborations do not need to be correct. For instance, given the sentence ''A group of woodpeckers is called a descent," people can elaborate the sentence by manufacturing a "because" to finish

it out. A group of woodpeckers is called a descent because ... together they could fell a tree. Of course, it is probably best to elaborate with a true reason

so that one does not build up misconceptions (e.g., a group of woodpeckers may actually be called a descent because woodpeckers like to peck trees from

the top to the bottom). Nevertheless, to simply remember the woodpecker-de­scent connection, the accuracy of the "because" does not matter.

The basic strategy for improving memory is to make up relevant connec­tions to what one already knows. There are three complementary approaches: precise and relevant elaborations, chunking, and connecting to well-struc­tured knowledge.

PRECISE AND RELEVANT

Relevant and precise elaborations create better retrieval paths. For instance, in one study people read sentences in one four conditions (Stein & Bransford, 1979):

56 I THE AB Cs OF How WE LEARN

(a) The tall man purchased the crackers. (no elaboration) (6) The tall man purchased the crackers. (come up with own elabora­

tion) (c) The tall man purchased the crackers that were on sale. (irrelevant

elaboration) (d) The tall man purchased the crackers that were on the top shelf.

(relevant elaboration)

People read 10 sentences like these. Afterward, they took a memory test in which they had to provide the missing adjective for each sentence: The ____ _

man purchased the crackers. The percentages of correctly remembered words were as follows:

(a) 42 percent (No Elaboration condition)

(b) 58 percent (Self-Elaboration condition) (c) 22 percent (Irrelevant Elaboration condition)

(d) 74 percent (Relevant Elaboration condition)

The relevant elaboration provided a precise connection that marked the relevance of the man's height for reaching the crackers. On average, receiving a relevant elaboration was even more effective than generating a

Figure E.3. Meaningful elaborations can help us

remember images. How would you elaborate these

images to improve your chances of remembering them

later? (Reprinted from Schwartz, 1999.)

E IS FOR ELABORATION I 57

self-elaboration. This is likely a result of some people making ineffective elaborations: when people in the self-elaboration condition did generate

their own precise and relevant elaborations, their probability of recall was

91 percent (Stein & Bransford, 1979). Relevant elaboration can also improve memory for pictures. Pretend you

need to remember the images in Figure E.3. They may appear as a bunch

of very hard to remember squiggles. It would help if you could elaborate by connecting the squiggles to something you already know. Here is a clue: the

image in the upper left corner is the head of a baseball player. For fun, we will let you figure out the other three (we provide them below). One handy use of

elaborating visual information is to remember people's names. Find a way to connect a name to its owner's facial features. To make up an example, the two Bs in "Burt Bennett" stand for his black beard.

CHUNKING

Chunking depends on urntmg discrete ideas (see also Chapter D). For instance, to remember the digits 2 6 2 4 2 2 2 0, one can chunk them as 26,

24, 22, and 20. Although there are still eight digits, it is easier to remember

four numbers than eight. (One can go further to elaborate that each chunk is two less than the preceding one.) Chunking depends on elaboration, because

it is prior knowledge that enables people to convert two digits into a single number (and to notice the pattern of subtracting by 2). A second example is

to chunk words into a sentence: house, dog, car, sprint, spring • Last spring, my dog sprinted from the house to chase a car. Here, the list is elaborated by

chunking the words into a single sentence and by connecting the sentence to prior experience.

CONNECTING TO WELL-STRUCTURED KNOWLEDGE

A third elaborative technique associates the new material to well-structured knowledge. The method of loci is an example. If people need to remember a

series of steps, parts of speech, or other sequential information, they can asso­ciate each step to a different room of their house or office. Once they have mentally "placed" the memories in their locations, they can later retrieve the

memories by taking an imagined walk through the house. The spatial mem­

ory for the house provides a well-known search path for finding the mem­ories. When you try to remember a person's name by working through the

alphabet, you are relying on a well-known sequence to help search memory. Did it start with an A, B, C ... ?

A hierarchy is also an example of a well-organized structure. In a famous study (Ericsson, Chase, & Faloon, 1980), a person had to remember long lists

of numbers. The person happened to be an active marathon runner. He took

58 I THE AB Cs OF How WE LEARN

sequences of numbers and associated them with known race times. For instance,

3 5 9 1 2 becomes 3 hours 59 minures and 12 seconds. He then further orga­

nized the elaborated chunks into a hierarchy such as race times early and late in

his career. This way, he only needed to remember "my early career race times,"

and it would connect to the chunked times and the digits within each chunk.

The three remaining elaborations for Figure E.3 are James Dean (lower

left), a baby (upper right), and Santa Claus (lower right) (Schwartz, 1999).

Ill. The Outcomes of Elaboration

Elaboration improves memory for declarative information, especially under conditions of cued recall. There are different conditions under which one

might need to remember something. For instance, one condition merely involves recognition memory: ''I've seen that painting before." Under condi­

tions of cued recall, a thought or stimulus cues memory for an associated

idea. Most school-based memory tests rely on cued recall: Given the name of

a vocabulary word, remember the definition. Remember the prime factors of

12. What is an example of an apex consumer? In each case, having more con­

nections between the possible cues and the memory will improve the chances of retrieving the answer.

IV. Can People Learn to Teach Themselves with Elaboration?

As presented here, elaboration is primarily an aid for memory. (To improve

understanding, it requires more constrained forms of elaboration, such as self-explanation; see Chapter S.) Elaboration strategies are relatively straight­

forward to teach and learn. In one study (Weinstein, 1982), researchers told

adolescents several elaboration strategies, including create a mental picture,

invent a story or sentence, and draw similarities and differences to what they already know. The students practiced with further coaching once a week for

five weeks. On the sixth week, they read a passage without coaching. One

month later, the students showed better memory for the passage than students who had not received elaboration training.

Even five-year-olds can learn simple elaboration strategies (Yuille & Catchpole, 1973). Children played a game in which they had to remember

which objects went together. Researchers trained one group of children to

imagine object pairs interacting, such that children learned to generate their own elaborations. The experimenters showed children ten pairs of objects side

by side and then showed how the objects in each pair could interact, such as

putting a hat on a duck, or a rock on a spoon. After the ten training pairs, the

experimenters told the children they would get new pairs of objects to study.

7

E IS FOR ELABORATION I 59

They encouraged the children to think about how the objects in the new pairs might interact, similar to what they had seen in the training pairs. The chil­

dren then saw a sequence of twenty pairs of objects set side by side. This group of children was compared with two groups who were not trained

to imagine objects interacting. In the Side-by-Side condition, children simply saw the twenty pairs of objects and heard that they "go together." In the Inter­

acting condition, the experimenters demonstrated the twenty pairs of objects interacting together, so that the children saw experimenter-generated elabora­tions. All the children then completed a cued-recall test. They saw one of the

objects (e.g., a rock) and had to pick out the paired object (e.g., a spoon).

Elaboration Training

11.6

No Training

Side-by-side

6.1

Demonstrated Interacting

12.2

Table E.1. Memory performance of five-year-olds taught and not taught to elaborate twenty pairs of objects (Data from Yuille & Catchpole, 1973)

Table E.l shows the results of the cued recall test for the twenty study pairs. There are two relevant comparisons. The first is that the children who

received the elaboration training nearly doubled the performance of other­

wise equivalent children who did not receive training and also saw each pair just side-by-side. The second is that children who learned to elaborate a con­

nection between two objects did nearly as well as the children who saw the experimenter explicitly show the objects interacting. This indicates that the

trained children had learned to elaborate quite well, even when not receiving the support of the experimenter to do so. Whether these children continued to

elaborate for the rest of their lives when nobody was telling them to imagine is unknown (and unlikely). Nevertheless, the study provides a concrete model

for how to help children understand how they can use an elaborative strategy.

\I. Risks Elaboration

Cognitive overload can block opportunities for elaboration. Perhaps you have

had the experience of being introduced to someone and forgetting her name

60 I THE AB Cs OF How WE LEARN

within a minute. You were probably putting most of your cognitive resources

into the social aspects of the introduction (e.g., saying something intelligent

and observing the reaction). You did not have the cognitive resources to spare

for elaborating the name and committing it to long-term memory.

Working memory can work with only a few ideas at once. When there is

too much information simultaneously, people experience high cognitive load

and it is difficult to elaborate, because just keeping all the information in

working memory is so much work. High cognitive load is a problem during

many college lectures. Chemistry and mathematics lecturers are notoriously

inconsiderate, because they present many new equations and ideas one after

another. The sheer number of new ideas introduced per minute makes it dif­

ficult to pay attention to all the new information and elaborate it simultane­

ously. Professors often forget how hard they worked to make sense of all that

they know~after all, it seems so obvious to them now. Consequently, they

offer lectures that are suitable for their peers, not for students. Compared

with students, their faculty peers can readily follow the lectures, because they

already know much of the information being presented and they have well-or­

ganized knowledge structures for quickly connecting a new equation or idea

to what they know.

A second elaboration risk is that people can misidentify what they need

to remember. Imagine that you need to remember the following words: bun,

stew, bee, boar, chive, ticks. A reasonable strategy is to elaborate the words

into food and creature categories. But what if the recall task demanded

remembering the order of the words? Then it would be better to use the peg­

word method: one-bun, two-stew, three-bee, fuur-boar, five-chive, six-ticks. It

is important to define one's memory goals before elaborating.

A common practice asks students to construct sentences using new vocab­

ulary words. When done well, it entails elaboration and improves memory

for the vocabulary words and their meaning. When done poorly, it is useless.

Here is a series of possible sentences for the word gloaming (twilight) ranked

from worst to best with respect to elaboration:

Gloaming is spelled g-1-o-a-m-i-n-g. 0 Not meaning focused

Gloaming means twilight. 0 Rehearsal, not elaboration

Gloaming could be a name for my dog. Sit, Gloaming, sit. 0 Irrelevant elaboration to prior knowledge

E IS FOR ELABORATION I 61

Gloaming is when the horrible mosquitoes finally went to bed during my

recent hike. • Relevant elaboration to prior knowledge The lovers glowed as they stole a kiss under the gloamingfringe of the night's

cloak. • Precise, double elaboration comprising the sound of the word and

its meaning

VII. Reforem::es

Ericsson, K. A., Chase, W. G., & Faloon, S. (1980). Acquisition of a memory

skill. Science, 208(4448), 1181-1182. Schwartz, D. L. (1999). The productive agency that drives collaborative learn­

ing. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed.), Collaborative learning: Cognitive and computational

approaches (pp. 197-218). New York: Pergamon. Stein, B. S., & Bransford, J. D. (1979). Constraints on effective elaboration: Effects

of precision and subject generation. journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behav­

ior, 18(6), 769-777. Tresselt, M. E., & Mayzner, M. S. (1960). A study of incidental learning. Journal of

Psychology, 50(2), 339-347. Weinstein, C. E. (1982). Training students to use elaboration learning strategies.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 7(4), 301-311. Yuille, J.C., & Catchpole, M. J. (1973). Associative learning and imagery training in

children. journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 16, 403-412.

62 I THE AB Cs OF How WE LEARN

E IS FOR ELABORATION

What is the core learning mechanic? The process of elaboration involves explicitly connecting new information to

what one already knows. Elaboration increases the chances of remembering the material later.

1s an v.o,nn10 and what is it good for? A student needs to memorize a problem-solving cycle that has the follow­

ing elements: identify problems, define goals, explore strategies, anticipate outcomes, look back to learn. An elaboration strategy is to find a way to

connect each of these steps and relate them to one's prior knowledge. One solution is to generate the acronym IDEAL and connect it to the idea of an ideal problem solver.

Why does it work? Human memory is vast. Remembering depends on finding the right mem­ory at the right time. Elaboration makes connections among memories when

learning, so it is easier to find a path to the stored information later. For instance, when asked how a "good" problem solver operates, one might think

good • ideal • IDEAL • identify problems, define goals ....

What problems does the core mechanic solve? Students forget too much.

• They have trouble remembering vocabulary words and their definitions. 0 They cannot remember the steps in a procedure. Teachers cannot remember student names.

• A teacher rereads the student roll sheet but cannot remember who is who.

of how to use it To learn vocabulary words.

· Create a sentence that reflects the meaning of the word precisely. To remember a long speech or a long sequence of actions. 0 Associate each section/step with way stations on a route that one

travels frequently.

To memorize a set of rules. 0 Make up an acronym that summarizes the rules. The acronym

FOIL (first, outer, inner, last) helps people remember the rules for multiplying binomials.

Risks

E IS FOR ELABORATION I 63

Teachers (and videos) may move so quickly that students do not have

time to elaborate. People may fail to identify what they are supposed to remember and

elaborate.

for

Generation

GENERATION IS A memorization technique that relies on the fact that remem­

bering something makes it easier to remember the next time.

Flash cards are the canonical example. You read a cue on one side, and you try to remember the target on the other side. With practice, you get better each time through the flash cards. The invention of flash cards surely

belongs in the pantheon of breakthroughs in learning technologies-simple, effective, and available to all.

Flash cards work because of the generation effect. The expression comes

from a famous study in which people learned word pairs (Slarnecka & Graf, 1978). You can get a feel for the study by looking at the three columns of word

pairs below. For the finished pairs, your task is to read each pair silently. In the cases where there are missing letters, you should generate the word. For instance, if you know that the second word is the opposite of the first, and you receive happy : s _ d, the appropriate generation is sad.

SYNONYMS ANTONYMS RHYMES fast: r _p_ d flavorful: bland rain · g_

pain : ache sleep: a __ k_ dime: time

witty:c __ v_ give: t stink: link

jump: leap leave: come graph:I ____

78

G IS FOR GENERATION I 79

If you wait a few minutes and then try to write down all the words (with­out peeking back), you will likely remember about 25 percent more of the

words that you had to generate compared with words you directly read. For

instance, you should remember rapid and clever better than ache and leap. You are also likely to remember the word rapid better than the word fast, even

though they are part of the same pair. This is because you had to generate rapid, whereas you only read fast.

Generation is very useful for improving recall. It is also very general-it works for memorizing motor movements as well as equations. Knowing some

of its subtleties can help avoid common memorization mistakes by enforcing two simple constraints: make sure that students generate the target memory {not

read it), and space the memorization practice over time (don't cram).

Generation works on the retrieval side of memory. It is not a technique for

encoding, or getting information into one's head (see Chapter E). You already knew all the words in the preceding example. Instead, generation is a tech­

nique for making it easier to retrieve the memories. The distinction between

encoding and retrieval is implicit in much classroom instruction. Teaching promotes the encoding of information; homework promotes its retrieval.

Homework typically involves some form of generation whereby people prac­tice remembering the information by accessing it to solve relevant problems or simply through rote practice.

How does generation work? The analogy to strengthening a muscle works well when considering the generation effect. Generation involves practicing

exactly what you need to do in the future-exert effort to retrieve a memory from cues. For instance, try to remember a single word that can go with each

the following words: cottage, cake, Swiss. The words are the cues. The correct memory, which takes some effort to find, is cheese. The successful effort to

find the word strengthens your memory for cheese (lucky you). Now, if we had just told you cottage cheese, cheesecake, and Swiss cheese, you would not have

needed to do any mental heavy lifting, and your memory for cheese would not have improved.

Also like muscles, memories weaken over time with disuse, so they become harder to retrieve. A well-defined forgetting function describes how memories

decay and become more difficult to retrieve. Memories fade the most in the

first few days and weeks after their acquisition but then flatten out to a very slow decay pattern, so they never fully disappear (forgetting follows a power law; see Chapter D).

The time course of memory acquisition influences the forgetting

80 I THE ABCs OF How WE LEARN

Caffeine

cl3 l~ltlal Encoding (~J" ,, '

H_iC O CH3

cl3

1st Practice <::() ' ' 1-1_ic rn3

2nd Practice ~:() ,,

3rd Practice ':() <, "

'""""'"" • Figure G.1. Expanded practice: generating more and

more from memory overtime.

function through an important mechanism called the spacing effect. Spac­

ing your memory acquisition over time will make the memory last longer in the future. It is better to practice vocabulary words ten minutes a day

for two days (spaced practice) than to study the words once for twenty minutes (massed practice). Spacing one's practice over two days buys about a 10 percent improvement in memory a month later (Cepeda, Pashler, Yul,

Wixted, & Rohrer, 2006). There are competing explanations for the spac­

ing effect, but a simple one is that it takes more effort to retrieve a memory a day later (spaced practice) than one second later (massed practice). The

greater effort creates a stronger memory trace, which in turn takes longer

to decay. The spacing effect helps explain a common experience. Once upon a

time, you must have crammed for a midterm test. You did all the study­

ing the night before the test in a big burst of effort. You remembered the material for the test the next day and felt very clever about the whole thing.

But now you cannot remember very much, and you may even have forgot­

ten most everything by the time of the final exam. This is because your memory coded the information as something you do not need to retrieve very often, and the memory decayed quickly. Spaced practice solves this

problem.

G IS FOR GENERATION I 81

it How to Uso Generation lo Enhance Learning

Tasks that require retrieving a memory based on a partial cue improves the strength of the memory. There are ways to optimize the generation effect.

The first is to keep the task at a desirable difficulty level (Bjork, 1994). You

want people to succeed at remembering, but you do not want it to be so easy that they do not have to work to remember. One nice approach is to use

expanded practice, where each subsequent round of practice requires remem­bering all the prior information plus a new piece of information. For example,

witb a deck of flash cards, it works well to do card 1, then cards 1 and 2, then cards 1 and 2 and 3, and so on. Figure G.l provides a concrete example.

The goal is to remember the molecular composition of caffeine. In rhe first round, people study the molecule. Ideally, they would use elaboration to help

encode the molecule; for instance, H shows up three times with three Hs (see Chapter E). When people move to retrieval practice, they only need to

remember and draw a few of the missing atoms and bonds on the first try. In

the second round, they need to remember everything from before plus a new set of removed atoms and bonds. The process of expanding the memory task

continues until finally, given the cue "caffeine," people can remember the full molecular structure.

A second important consideration is that people increase the strength of

the memory trace that they generate but not the cue that triggers the memory. (People remember the target rapid better than the cue fast in this chapter's initial example.) The implication is that sometimes it is important to swap

the cue and the target memory. If you want to remember a definition for a

word, you should use the word as the cue and generate the definition from memory. However, if you want to remember the word given a definition, then

you should use the definition as the cue and generate the word from memory. People often forget that they need to practice in both directions.

The third important consideration is temporal spacing. As described above, it is better to practice over several sessions than to cram it all into one

session. There is also a second temporal issue: sleep. People consolidate their memories during sleep (see Chapter Z). It is a good idea to do memorization

practice, get a good sleep, and then practice again to build on top of the con­

solidation. It is another reason that practicing for two days is better than one.

Ill. The Outcomes of Generation

Generation works for all types of memories and tasks, but it is especially use­ful for memory tasks that require free recall. Free recall refers to tasks where

I,

• 82 I THE ABCs •F How WE LEARN

there is not a strong external stimulus cuing your memory, for instance, if you

are trying to remember what somebody told you in a conversation last month,

or if you have a final exam where you need to write down all the formulas you

can remember from algebra.

One natural implication of the generation effect is that simply taking a test

will improve memory (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011). Taking a test requires retriev­

ing memories and therefore improves the accessibility of those memories later,

for example, on a future test. Of course, the implication is not that students

should only take repeated tests; rather, they should practice remembering what

they know. Much school-based instruction focuses on encoding and elabo­

rating information to make it meaningful. This is one important side of the

memory equation, but people also need to practice the retrieval side.

IV. Can People Learn to Teach Themselves with Generation?

People learn all sorts of memorization techniques, so it is not difficult to

get them to learn generation strategies. People often think that wanting to

remember something will help. There is little evidence that the desire to

remember, for example, to do well on a test, improves memory (Hyde &

Jenkins, 1973). Instead of wishing themselves to a good memory, people must

invoke deliberate memorization strategies such as generation and elaboration.

V. Risks of Generation

The primary risk of generation is that people can generate the wrong thing,

which will strengthen an "incorrect" memory. A common experience is driv­

ing up to an intersection and not remembering whether to turn left or right.

After some deliberation, you take a turn only to realize that (a) it is the wrong

direction, and (b) it is the direction you turned the last time you were at

the same intersection. Blame it on the generation effect! Because you gener­

ated the turn last time, you were more likely to remember it again this time.

In fact, by taking the wrong turn yet again, you strengthened the incorrect

memory trace further!

VI. Examples of Good and Bad Use

Imagine you have used your yellow marker to highlight a sentence in a text.

Let us imagine you highlighted Generation works on the retrieval side of mem­

ory. When you go hack to study your text, you make a point of rereading the

highlighted sentence. This is a poor, but common, strategy. By rereading the

sentence, you are not practicing remembering, because it is right there for you

,

G IS FOR GENERATION I 83

to read. It would be much better if you tested your memory by only reading

the firsr half of the sentence and generating the rest from memory: Gener­

ation works on the .... Perhaps people would remember more if they only

highlighted part of tbe sentence and used that as a cue to remember the rest.

Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of

human beings. In J. Metcalfe and A. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing

about knowing (pp. 185-205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed

practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological

Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380.

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84 I THE AB Cs OF How WE LEARN

G IS FOR GENERATION

What is the core learning mechanic? Practicing the retrieval of target memories given partial cues or hints improves future retrieval.

IS an nv,,mn!n and what is it good for? Flash cards are the original example. On one side a card says jocund, and on the other side it says, cheerful and lighthearted. To work on memorizing the

definition, people read the vocabulary word (the cue) and practice generating the definition (the target) without looking at the other side. This improves

memory for the definition. If people simply flip the card over to read the defi­nition, instead of trying to remember the definition first, there will be little

improvement in memory.

does it work? Retrieving a memory increases the strength of the memory, so it is easier to retrieve later. Spreading out memorization practice over several days increases memory strength compared with memorizing in only one session.

What problems does the core mechanic solve? Students have trouble memorizing arbitrary facts and conventions. " They cannot remember correct spelling.

" They cannot remember the names of the presidents. Students have trouble recalling information without strong reminders. " They cannot remember the definition of a word without giving

them multiple hints.

Students forget too easily.

" Students do well on a weekly test but forget the information for the final exam.

LAaii<1J1~, of how to use it To learn vocabulary words and their definitions. " Use flash cards going both directions. Given the word, remember

its definition. Given a definition, remember the word. To remember an organic molecule. " Show all of the molecule except a couple of atoms and bonds, and

ask students to remember the missing pieces. Show the molecule again, but remove additional atoms and bonds. Ask students to

Risks

G IS FOR GENERATION ! 85

remember all the missing pieces. Continue until the students can remember the complete molecule when only hearing its name.

People may generate the wrong thing, which will strengthen the "incor­rect" memory.

People tend to read the answer before trying to generate it, which under­

mines the effect.