Pacing study sessions reduce study time by 96% according to science
Alright, so we’ve covered where to study last week.
But when is the best time to study?
In this post, we will address exactly that.
The Old Adage
Remember when our teachers and parents were consistently telling us to avoid waiting till the last minute to start studying?
Turns out, it might actually be advice worth following.
Herman Ebbinghaus who basically pioneered the field on memory research, said this in Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology:
a suitable distribution of them over a space of time is decidedly more advantageous than the massing of them at a single time.
Since Ebbinghaus time, there were hundreds of experiments more demonstrating the power of distributing learning over a period of time (If you are interested, here is a huge meta-study looking at a whooping 184 articles!!)
The bottom line?
Having multiple short study sessions on the same material is better than one long session.
It’s like playing farmville. Small consistent actions everyday are bigger than one long haul.
This practice has been termed space repetition.
How does it work? Let’s find out.
Understanding space repetition
Let’s face it, there is so much more to space than we humans understand. So much to explore and so many things unexplained.
Space repetition is the same.
I’m not sure if it’s a name thing or what, but no one is really sure how spaced repetition works.
We have however, theories!
“Now class, please try question 4 on implicit differentiation which we covered last week,” says the teacher. You then vaguely pull up the distant memory of her talking about such a subject the last week.
Compare this to the teacher saying, “Alright, please finish of the 4 questions on implicit differentiation.” by question 3, you’ll probably be just going through the motions.
This is exactly what one theory puts forth, theorizing that space repetition encourages recall, which aids in memory retention, will mass repetition does none of that because the same thing was just repeated over and over. (Here’s a paper mentioning this theory)
Another theory states that with space repetition, you’ll be surrounded by different surroundings. This links back to the idea of how our study space affects retention. In essence, there are more contextual cues available for the encoding of the facts being learned with a varied location. These contextual cues then serve as more effective cues for subsequent recall of facts.
The final one is the deficient processing of massed repetition.
What a name you say?
I totally agree. This theory says that when the item presented is the same as the one before, the redundancy reduces attention. This theory brings back memories of boredom in the classroom as the teacher kept repeating the same points. #excusetosleep? (Check out this paper if you’re interested!)
Ultimately, it isn’t the case where one theory is wrong and the others are right. It probably is a little bit of everything at play here. I mean, the more the merrier right?
Anyways, so we have understood roughly how spaced repetition helps us, but can it really allow you the same score while spending 96% less time? (I’m cruel so you’ll have to read on to find out:)
Achieving more with less (short run)
Here comes the 96% goodness.
So imagine that today is the day of your test score release. You walk up to the front to receive your papers from your teachers and went back to sit. Looking at your paper, you noticed your score was the exact same number as your jersey:
Wait.
That ain’t right, it was suppose to be some high number, not an average 60.
And you’re right, but I left out one part.
You only had an hour plus of direct interaction with your teacher while your peers who got the same score as you spent 4 months, or 23 hours with direct teacher interaction.
That was essentially what happened in this study led by Paul Kelley and Terry Whatson.
In the study, students took a Biology course either through traditional teaching over four months (controls) or only a single Spaced Learning session of 60 min instructional time (experimental).
The 60-minute instructional time itself was broken into three 20 minute session, separated with 10 minute breaks filled with clay modelling. Each of them covering everything that was needed to be known each time. The test was then given five days after the hour long teaching session to remove the possibility of short term memory as much as possible.
The results as we saw, was the same as those who spent 23 hours of instructional time with the teachers.
I’m impressed. So we know that in a study session, it might be better to spend it going over the same content multiple times instead of going it over once, slowly.
It’s better to keep moving even if we are not yet 100% sure and revisit it later than to get everything up to 100% in one shot during a study session.
But what about longer schedules? Like the timing between each study sessions? Luckily, science has got us covered too.
Achieving more with less (long haul)
In 2008, the financial crisis happened.
At the same time, a group of researchers from MIT, University of California, San Diego, York University and the University of South Florida was carrying out a massive experiment.
Consisting of 1,350 students, each of them was given a set of facts to remember. Everyone had two study sessions, but the timing between these sessions varied, and so did the time from the final study session to the test date.
The results?
Here’s what the aptly titled study Spacing Effects in Learning had to say:
as RI [retention interval] increases, the optimal gap should increase… the ratio of optimal gap to RI should decline.
In essence, the longer you want to remember something for, the longer the time between each of your study sessions. Here’s a table for reference derived from the study above and another for the optimal gaps with two study sessions:
As you can see, the gaps aren’t rocket science. There isn’t a particular day where you absolutely must study. It’s different because you are unique and slightly different from everyone else, like how I am too.
However, if there was one thing that was noted, it was that pushing study sessions back a little was better than bringing it forward a little (although if you could do three, you’ll be the winner here). Both studies used to derived the table above, they showed that effectiveness of the space repetition increase sharply before tapering of gradually, like in the graph below:
How much more effective?
Studying within the optimal gaps results in as much as 64% increase in test scores compared to other gaps (especially in the gap before hitting the optimal gap).
At this point, you might be saying, “I study way more than two times for one subject, how’s this suppose to help?!”
I hear you.
And so did another group of researchers who published the paper Should spacing be expanding or equal-interval?:
Our findings suggest that when retrieval practice is spread out over days or weeks, scheduling the review sessions in an expanding fashion produces better average performance than does equal-interval spacing over the training period. Expanding practice not only produces faster acquisition and greater access to the material over the training period, it was even observed to slightly retard forgetting over the long term, too.
Confused? I’d be too, I mean, how am I going to actually use this stuff?!
Let’s wrap things up with an example.
Scheduling Study sessions
Imagine that you have a physics exam in 1 months time. Here’s what I would do:
- Start with the base, so the first review at one month mark, second review 8–11 days after. (assuming 31 days in the month)
2. If I wanted to put in another session, I’d schedule this one just before the actual exam.
3. Add another one still? Sure, I’d put it a day after the first review.
4. and another one? Well, I’d put it two weeks after the 8–11 days review.
In essence, the more sessions you put in, the more your schedule should resemble something like a longitudinal wave in physics — spacious in the middle, with sessions concentrated near the initial review to prevent forgetting and just before the exam to ensure maximum retention.
That said, filling it up till it actually looks like a longitudinal wave should not happen. We are trying to study more efficiently so we can study less, not the same. But if that’s your cup of tea, then go for it!
With that, we basically covered every step you need to plan a study session. Well done you! That 13 minutes you just spent reading will probably save you hours down the road, or not, let me know down below!
Also, be sure to join the Just Jeffing family newsletter to get all the latest post straight to your inbox, for free!
With that, I’ll leave you with a quote from Benedict Carey, the author of How We Learn:
cramming works fine in a pinch. It just doesn’t last. Spacing does.
Bonus:
Congrats for making it to the end of the article! Here’s more knowledge for you as a reward!
You might have noticed that this article was focused on how spaced repetition can help us retain facts better.
And you’d be right.
Facts, muscle memory, content. Space repetition helps with any form of memorization that needs to be done, be it physical or mental.
At this stage, you are probably saying, “reproducing information verbatim is not the goal of school!” And I couldn’t agree more.
Nevertheless, having quick access to the basics, be it science, math or humanities, is crucial for higher order learning. Here’s super apt example brought up by Sean H. K. Kang in his article Spaced Repetition Promotes Efficient and Effective Learning:
For instance, remembering arithmetic facts (e.g., times table) is a critical part of mathematical skill learning, and a transition from calculation to direct memory retrieval of the answer allows more efficient problem solving
Other than efficient problem solving, imagine remembering that cells having a cell membrane that is a semi -ermeable membrane suddenly allows you to understand the fluid mosaic model of cell membranes.
Okay, so maybe you won’t suddenly know new facts without studying them, but by knowing and having good recall of basic facts, you actually start to wield an ungodly ability for the transfer of learning. (Wow! This superhero is either seriously lame or sounding a lot like Sherlock)
Transfer of learning is basically the ability to apply the knowledge learnt to new concepts and situations. In one study, the authors had a group of 116 undergraduates split into two groups, Massers, and Spacers. Spacers did 5 question in one sitting and 5 questions in another sitting one week later. Massers joined the spacers in the second session to complete 10 questions in one sitting.
After four weeks, the students were tested on a brand new set of questions and the Spacers scored on average, double that of the Massers.
Here’s what the authors of the study had to say
benefits of distributed practice extend to conceptual tasks and are not limited to tasks requiring the verbatim recall of atomized facts.
Space repetition is at the end of the day, just a study technique, ultimately, you still have to put in the study sessions and actually study!
Go flip paper and do more than study!
