Have you ever been taking a test and had that feeling where you knew the answer but just couldn’t quite remember? Well that feeling has a name. It’s called the tip-of-the- tongue phenomenon and it classified as a retrieval failure. Now I know what you’re thinking- “what in the world does that mean?” to answer that question, i first have to explain a little bit about how memory works. When you first hear or see a new piece of information, it enters our short term memory which holds seven pieces of information (give or take two pieces). If we attend to the new information-that is, rehearse or think about the new information-it is encoded and transferred to our long term memory. Now that the information is stored in long term memory, it is usually pretty easy to recall or remember it, but sometimes we just can’t remember. This is called retrieval failure.

Now that we understand memory a bit more, we can apply this principle to test preparation.  There are many reasons a person might forget, but many of these reasons are preventable. One of these things is distraction. When we are studying, if we are distracted by our phones or noisy little brothers and sisters, we may not pay enough attention to the information we are trying to learn to enable us to transfer it to our long term memory. It is best to turn off your phone and study in a quiet place to increase the chances of learning the information and acing that test. The amount of remembered material often depends on the amount of time spent learning it, which is called the spacing effect. When we study in intervals, we allow our mind to fully process whatever we are studying without being overwhelmed.

Timing is another matter to consider. Studying before bed can also improve memory. Going through your notes or reading your textbook roughly 45 minutes before bed allows our brains to encode the new information with relatively fewer distractions than if we were to stay awake. However, information that we experience moments before sleep are not recorded in our memories. In other words, if you fall asleep while studying, you may have to do some relearning.  We have all heard that practice makes perfect, and in the case of memory, it’s true.

Repetition is another effective way to memorize information. This could mean a number of things: rewriting your notes, doing homework, and practice problems again, rereading the text, or even taking practice tests. Using mnemonics in addition to repetition is another effective strategy. Keywords, visual cues, or anything to aid your memory is a mnemonic. This proves especially helpful because we tend to remember things better if we can put them in a context that applies to ourselves. Writing your notes using your own words instead of blindly copying off of a power point is helpful based on the same principle. Learning how to memorize takes time. And time is one thing busy students do not have. But if you can squeeze in 15-30 minutes per class per day using a combination of strategies above, that tip-of-the-tongue feeling will be less likely to plague you on your next test day.

references:

http://examinedexistence.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/02/brain-health.jpg

http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/tp/explanations-for-forgetting.htm

http://bcs.worthpublishers.com/myers7e/default.asp?s=&n=&i=&v=&o=&ns=0&t=&uid=0&rau=0