Learning and Memory

Avoiding illusions of learning: Strategies for improving self-regulated learning

With the start of a new term underway, many students and educators are likely in the process of creating goals for a successful term and developing plans toward achieving those goals. Students’ goals might include earning a certain grade in their course or mastering the course material. To achieve these goals, students may create a […]

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When do learners mix it up: The power of a correct answer

Imagine you are preparing for a geology exam that will test your ability to identify different types of rocks. You have a lot of examples to study, but you are not sure how to organize them. Should you study one category at a time, studying several examples of obsidian and then several examples of peridotite? […]

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“I need to YouTube this.” Strategic learning from instructional videos

What makes students and instructors choose, sustain their learning with, and learn meaningfully from instructional videos? I recently became the homeowner of a mid-80s colonial revival and have taken on several projects to bring it out of the 80s and into a more contemporary style. Levelling out a sunken dining room is much more challenging […]

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Test first, learn later: The power of pretesting to enhance learning

Here’s a burning question: What strategies can actually improve classroom learning? One promising strategy—pretesting—may be the answer for both instructors and students. Certainly, the notion of “evidence-based teaching” is becoming entrenched in the education lexicon, as instructors search for answers. Institutions are spending lots of money, resources, labour, and time to develop websites, offer workshops, […]

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Introduction to the #strategicLearning Digital Event

Imagine you have a 4-year-old about to participate in the marshmallow test, a measure of their ability to delay gratification. In front of them is a treat, and they have the option to take the immediate, smaller reward (e.g., one marshmallow) or receive a delayed, larger reward (e.g., two marshmallows) by waiting until an experimenter […]

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Distorting memories in plain sight – but under the radar

Memories, oh memories, they can be so powerful, and detailed, and… ours. Only that, sometimes, they may not actually be ours. As we all can remember important things in our lives, and the subjective experience of remembering often tells us that our memories are coming from within, it’s easy to assume, and to feel, that […]

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Visual long-term memory is massive, but only if the memories are meaningful

How well do you remember detailed visual information, such as the precise color or shape of an object you saw several hours ago? Although intuition might suggest that our memory for fine details is quite poor, research finds that visual long-term memory has a massive capacity for visual details of objects and scenes. For instance, after […]

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Pretesting improves learning but learners need a push to appreciate it

In this episode of All Things Cognition, I interviewed Michelle Rivers and Steven Pan (pictured below) about their recent Psychonomic Society journal Memory & Cognition paper called “Metacognitive Awareness of the Pretesting Effect Improves with Self-Regulation Support.” In addition to talking about the benefits of pretesting (or prequestions) on learning, we also talked about other effective […]

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A closer look at the hidden faces of face recognition impairment: Excluded cases from prosopagnosia research

Do you ever have trouble recognizing a familiar face? I do from time to time. But frankly, I was surprised to know that there are individuals for whom this is beyond an occasional nuisance, and it profoundly affects their social and emotional lives because of a neurological condition called prosopagnosia. I first heard of prosopagnosia […]

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