LEARN Logs

When the learner cannot overcome it — material far above your level, or that produces failure with no learning, is an undesirable difficulty. Harder helps only up to the point where you can still succeed with effort. The word "desirable" is load-bearing and easy to forget. The be...

Quiz: LEARN / Desirable Difficulties | updated: Jul 30, 2026

The optimal GAP between sessions grows with how long you must retain, but the gap-to-retention RATIO shrinks — roughly 10–20% of your target interval for short goals, dropping toward ~5% for a one-year goal. Cepeda and colleagues had people study something twice, varied the gap b...

Quiz: LEARN / Desirable Difficulties | updated: Jul 30, 2026

No real audience is needed — a rubber duck, pet, or imaginary student works — but you must do it FROM MEMORY, and just re-summarizing in the original jargon is NOT the technique. The mechanism is retrieval plus plain-language generation, so what matters is that you pull the expla...

Quiz: LEARN / Desirable Difficulties | updated: Jul 30, 2026

During sleep the brain replays and relocates the day's memories — reactivating them and moving them into long-term storage. Diekelmann & Born (2010, Nature Reviews Neuroscience) describe the active systems consolidation account. During slow-wave sleep (SWS) — the deepest non-drea...

Quiz: LEARN / Focus, Sleep & Systems | updated: Jul 30, 2026

Preliminary — mind maps are useful for organising and overview, but controlled evidence that mapping beats simpler methods is weak, and retrieval practice has outperformed it head-to-head. A mind map is a radial diagram spreading outward from a central concept, branching into sub...

Quiz: LEARN / Focus, Sleep & Systems | updated: Jul 30, 2026

Storage reflects accumulated, durable learning that doesn't unlearn; retrieval reflects current accessibility, which naturally decays and is disturbed by interference. In Bjork's model the two strengths obey different rules on purpose. Storage strength is a ratchet: every meaning...

Quiz: LEARN / How Memory Works | updated: Jul 30, 2026

No — that fluency mostly reflects high retrieval strength in the moment, which is a weak and often misleading sign of durable learning. Re-reading keeps the material continuously in front of you, so retrieval strength stays pinned high and everything reads as "known." But recogni...

Quiz: LEARN / How Memory Works | updated: Jul 30, 2026

You'll rate a word as more memorable just because it was shown in a bigger font or spoken louder — a perceptual cue that has nothing to do with actual recall. In JOL studies, words presented in large fonts or at higher volume get judged as more likely to be remembered than the sa...

Quiz: LEARN / Metacognition & Myths | updated: Jul 30, 2026

Dual coding says use multiple modes for EVERYONE; the learning-styles myth says give each individual ONLY their single preferred mode. Opposite advice. Dual coding is about the material's format: represent a concept in words and visuals so every learner encodes it twice. It's add...

Quiz: LEARN / Metacognition & Myths | updated: Jul 30, 2026

Deliberately pulling information OUT of your memory — self-quizzing — instead of passively putting it back IN by re-reading. Re-reading, highlighting, and copying notes feel productive but mostly move your eyes over already-familiar words. Retrieval practice means closing the boo...

Quiz: LEARN / Retrieval Practice | updated: Jul 30, 2026