Memory and Learning

Wired magazine published and interesting article, "Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn?" by Gary Wolf, about Piotr Wozniak, the man behind a Windows program called SuperMemo that promises to improve your memory.

Perhaps a little too fundamentalist in his views for my comfort level, the article and Wozniak bring up an interesting point for educators:

...there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information... Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It's too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.... Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting.

It's worth taking a gander at the short Wikipedia entry on the "Forgetting Curve" suggesting mnemonics and repetition are the main techniques for improving memory, though, it should be noted that this has nothing to do with critical thinking or other cognitive skills. Thus, with the emphasis in education moving away from straight memorization of facts, and ubiquitous access to the internet when information is needed, it's not likely to be a glamorous addition to techniques of pedagogy. However, for second (third, fourth) language learning this research seems particularly useful in terms of vocabulary.

Don't forget to read this article ever twenty minutes for the remainder of the day.