imagine if there were a set of study techniques so powerful that they could transform anybody into a top aade student well there are they're based on scientific evidence and according to this paper from nature they're some of the most robust findings in the psychology of learning so what are these techniques well that's what I'm going to share with you in this video four study strategies that are scientifically proven to transform your learning ability once you know how to use them you'll be able to become a top student in any subject you want but first science has also shown that there are two widely used study strategies that you must avoid because they're holding you back the first is highlighting the second rereading think about it how many times have you read a page in a book only to realize you didn't absorb anything or have you ever spent hours highlighting only to forget everything later you're not alone let's explore why this happens rereading a text and highlighting creates a familiarity a fluency with the Learning Materials giving the illusion of learning because you get to know the material so well you develop a false sense of Mastery you are fooled into believing that your knowledge of the words in the text is a sign of your understanding of the concepts but it's not it's superficial I remember my University days highlighting nearly every line in my textbooks thinking I Was preparing for my exams only later did I realize that I was just coloring the pages now let's dive into methods that actually work retrieval practice in 1917 a handful of children in grades 3 5 6 and 8 were told to study short biographies from who's who in America they were split into groups some were directed to just read others to spend varying amounts of time pausing from the text looking up and reciting to themselves what they'd read then they were tested every group that used recitation retained more information than the ones that just read the best results were from those who spent 60% of their study time in recitation this result has been repeated in hundreds of experiments since then and is one of the most robust findings in the psychology of learning what does it mean for you testing isn't just a way of assessing what you know it's an uncommonly effective learning strategy our brains learn better when we try to retrieve information than when we try to deposit it so as you're reading a text test yourself if you feel you should reread the text test yourself in instead it doesn't matter how free recall multiple choice short answer true false quizzes or tests or flash cards in fact and this seems astonishing studies show that retrieval practice helps on a subject about which you know nothing yes dear viewer if I ask you some questions on let's say Aeronautical Engineering and I'm assuming you're not an aeronautical engineer if you are please let me know in the comments just attempting to answer them somehow preps your brain to receive that information and that helps helps you learn it better it's like magic is there a downside not really the slight downside is that this requires more effort than just rereading or highlighting and so it can feel less effective whilst you're doing it which can push you back to your old ways of doing things but you know about this now and so that won't happen to you will it actually this magic method works better as the difficulty increases it's referred to as desirable difficulty and the harder you have to work to retrieve the information the better you'll remember and understand it a single session of retrieval practice can generate memory improvements that persist for 9 months and the positive effects of retrieval over multiple sessions can last for at least 8 years there's a reason doing it over multiple sessions has an even more beneficial effect it's called space practice which handily is the name of technique number two in a recent study students in a math class were given 12 practice problems covering two topics to test whether it's more effective to learn intensively in a single session or over multiple sessions spaced out in time one group tackled the problems in a day while the other spaced them out over three separate days each a week apart four weeks later both groups were tested on new problems from the same topics so you might be wondering which approach proved Superior the space group outperformed the other group but it was the margin of outperformance that was extraordinary they scored twice as high it's not surprising that the more you interact with a topic the better you learn it what is surprising is the timing of practice has a huge impact on learning outcomes learning sessions that are spaced out over time produce far better results than the same quantity of sessions over a shorter time period this is known as the spacing effect and like retrieval practice it was first written about over a hundred years ago and it is one of the most reliable and robust findings in the psychology of learning the effects are seen over all age groups and at all levels of learning it helps with memory retention and transfer of knowledge to new domains and the effects are longlasting this paper from 2013 investigated 10 study strategies the research has found retrieval practice and distributed learning which is another term for space practice to be the most beneficial you can see the effect from the chart it also uncovered a fascinating finding the longer you want to remember something the greater the spacing interval should be for example to remember something for one week learning episodes should be spaced 12 to 24 hours apart to remember something for 5 years the learning episodes should be spaced 6 to 12 months apart this is all very interesting but how does it help you spaced practice is a technique you can apply to your own learning immediately and at the end of this video I'll show you some Splendid resources for learning how to do it combining it with retrieval practice makes it even more effective and if you want to get really smart you could schedule different topics within a session that would definitely help because it's called into leaving and it's technique number three variety may be the spice of life but it's also the secret to learning so spice it up what do I mean by that well do not spend large amounts of time on one topic switch around this is another one of those recommendations that sound counterintuitive but it works you might think I'm wrong but I'm right and I have science on my side like retrieval practice in spacing um can you tell me what they are see what I did there inter leaving is ridiculously effective students don't like it much and neither do teachers just as you're starting to become familiar with the topic it's whipped away and you're presented with something else you wouldn't stand for it in a restaurant you'd think the waiter had lost their mind but you will be improving yours if you follow this strategy I can see or not convinced so how about this in what seems like an inhuman test college students learning to calculate the volumes of unique geometric shapes was split into two groups one group practiced problems categorized by shape type the achieving an 89% accuracy during practice the second group tackled a mixed sequence of problems and achieved 60% accuracy however on a test a week later the first group's accuracy dropped drastically to 20% while the mix sequence group improved to 63% another research experiment focused on associating paintings with their respective artists here a popular hypothesis was that studying a single artist's U extensively that's Mass practice before switching to another would be the optimal learning strategy the underlying idea being that this focused approach would ingrain the unique characteristics of each artist's style the interleafed approach which mixes up artwork from different artists was expected to confuse students but the expectations were wrong when it came to matching artworks to their creators at a later stage the inter levers inter left the other group behind they not only identified the previously seen artworks correctly but also accurately associated new artworks with the artists unseen during the learning phase yet even after these results students still saw Mass practice a superior but you won't do that now that you know why would you do that how would you do that what would happen if you did that oh my I've just accidentally introduced the next technique elaborative interrogation do you remember being a young child I bet you asked a lot of questions why does it rain why is the sky blue how do birds fly children are naturally C ious and they never stop asking questions they're building a mental model of the world trying to make it make sense it's extremely effective hold that thought cuz I want to show you something I want to show you this it is an Open Access paper that covers all of these techniques actually plus a few others it's called teaching the science of learning and I really recommend it and it has a section on elaborative interrogation it's as you're going through learning materials you need to ask yourself questions and as you ask yourself these how and why questions you're fitting in the new knowledge into your existing knowledge Network which is a very effective way of learning so this is a great place to start if you want to learn these techniques there's a link in the description another free resource for learning all this stuff is learning scientists. org that's a great website and it has lots of articles about all the various different methods that I've discussed in the video If you're looking for an online paid course then this one from corsera is pretty good I'd recommend that and if it's a book you want then this is the best one make it stick and there's a link in the description imagine if there was a method of learning that made it all much easier that was 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