Key Concepts: Serial Position Effect; Primacy Effect; Recency Effect; Memorable Melodies; Strategic Breaks; 20-40 Rule

Summary: In any learning effort, the brain most easily remembers what it encountered at the beginning and end of the session. This is the serial position effect, and it can be found everywhere. How can we use this principle effectively: take strategic breaks!

All That Wasted Time!

You’re in a daze, surrounded by a mindless fog of confusion. You carefully peer into your thoughts, to find that you remember only half the events of the past 2 hours, if that much.

“What have I done?” you ask yourself.

2 hours ago, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you were ready to do some learning. You were confident that the vast knowledge available to you would find fertile ground in your eager mind. Yet you closed that book, put down that guitar, or dropped your notes with only a fraction of the knowledge retained.

This happens to everyone. But what exactly happened?

Timing is Everything

The reason is quite simple: You studied 2 hours straight. And (surprise!), you were doomed from the beginning. Unless you were raised by a vigilant cognitive psychologist, chances are you were never taught the crucial importance of timing. The human brain is simply not equipped to retain large amounts of minute information presented along such a long span of time.

This is why studying seems like such a pointless waste of time. So much work, but so little to show for it!

The Problem: The Serial Position Effect

Enter our old friend Herr Ebbinghaus, one of the fathers of modern memory psychology. The good doctor found two interesting phenomena during his sessions of memorizing series of syllables:

First, Ebbinghaus found that those syllables he studied at the beginning of each session were recalled much more readily than those that were studied later on. This phenomenon is known as the primacy effect.

Second, the doctor found that the syllables he studied at the end of each session were similarly easier to recall. This is known as the recency effect.

Taken together, the good doctor Ebbinghaus dubbed them the serial position effect. In a nutshell, we are more likely to remember what we encounter first and last in any period of concentration. Conversely, we are more likely forget whatever was in the middle.

The Serial Position Effect and Music: What Makes a Song Memorable

https://youtu.be/eDdI7GhZSQA

The serial position effect is why so many songs begin and end with simple themes. Consider “Hey Jude” by the Beatles. Try to remember the bones of the melody. As it happens, most people who have heard the song a few times will remember two basic things: the iconic “Hey Jude…” melody and the “Na, na, na, nananana…” tune. Not surprisingly, these are found at the beginning and end of this song. Listen to any iconic Beatles song and you’ll find that this is true for most of them. The Beatles instinctively understood the serial position effect and put it to industrious use.

This principle applies to many famous composers and musicians throughout history. Beethoven used the principle to great effect in his 5^th Symphony. The serial position effect is one of the reasons why such a historical composition is remembered to this day. I encourage all of my readers to go back to their favorite pieces of music and explore this principle themselves.

The Solution: The 20-40 Rule

So how are we to harness this magnificent piece of knowledge we have just learned? Despite my dramatic subheading, there are no complex strategies involved: Take breaks often. Simply resting will tell your brain that there was a distinct beginning and end.

But there is the matter of timing. What is the optimum balance of concentration and rest? Thus far, there is very little concrete research done on this. I believe this is largely due to the media frenzy about decreased attention spans due to television and viral media. But in my experience, it’s a simple matter of trial and error.

In Use Your Head, Tony Buzan gives a general guideline I’ve always found useful for myself and my clients: focus for 20-40 minutes at a time, with 5-10 minute breaks in between. I call this the 20-40 Rule. The beauty of this “rule” is its flexibility. Certain things will be easier or harder to focus on depending on the person. If you are practicing some new music, you will probably be able to engross yourself for 40 whole minutes without losing your energy. But if you want to maximize your recall, you must make sure you take that 5-10 minute break.

In some situations, your brain will naturally want continuity. When practicing a speech or presentation, feel free to pause after each topic. When studying a textbook, take a break at each section. But when practicing a specific sports move, you will want to time your breaks to maximize your muscle memory. The same goes with practicing instruments; it is easy to lose track of time when you are doing something repetitive.

Conclusion: The Serial Position Effect is Everywhere

I wrote about the serial position effect in musical composition above. If you read any essay or article, the introduction and conclusion will always summarize the main points. The memorable conflicts and resolutions of many TV shows and sitcoms will be shown in the first 5 and final 5 minutes of the episode. One of the reasons books have chapters is so you will remember them better. When you think about an acquaintance, you will likely remember their first and final impressions. And so on, ad infinitum. After a short while, you will be able to easy observe the serial position effect everywhere. It’s that pervasive.

And in case you were wondering, yes, the serial position effect is one of the reasons why the Pomodoro Technique is so effective. But the principles of the technique go quite a bit deeper than that. In fact, an analysis of this technique will be useful in illustrating the basic principles of something we’ve only grazed in this article: Concentration and focus.

Key Concepts: Linear Study; Forgetting Curve; Review Efficiency Effect; Spacing Effect; Spaced Repetition

Summary: We were taught to study chapter by chapter, then cram for exams. We continue to use this approach through adulthood. But the Curve of Forgetting demonstrates that we will soon forget most information learned this way. The best approach is review as you progress: spaced repetition.

We Were Doomed To Forget

We’ve all been there. It might have been for a class, a presentation, a training course, a promotion exam, or even a recital. You might be diligently keeping up with the current research in your field. And you committed to study, knowing how crucial increasing your knowledge base is inside this increasing information boom.

You attended [nearly] all of the [important] lectures, conferences, or seminars. You’ve read [virtually] all of the relevant books and articles. Your notes were [almost] perfect. And at the moment of truth, you succeeded.

A Month Or Two Passes…

And you have to spend days re-studying previous materials for a cumulative exam. A client calls for a simple fact and you’re floundering for Wikipedia. Your boss simply asks you to repeat that hit presentation next Monday and you have to give up the weekend.

All of those precious weeks and months of preparation: gone.

What Happened?

The culprit is our schooling. We were doomed from the beginning. Most of us (except for the lucky few who grew up among psychologists) learned to study linearly. We were taught a chapter or two, then were tested, then moved on to the next, over and over again. This carries on into adulthood, for anything that require studying and memorizing information.

This works if the whole point of studying endlessly was to pass an exam and forget everything about it. But this is rarely the case. The whole point of all that work was to remember. You need this hard-won knowledge for your next class, your clients, or for yourself.

I’m here to show you a different approach.

The Problem: The Forgetting Curve

It all starts with Herman Ebbinghaus, considered the father of modern memory psychology. He memorized series of syllables and charted his recall through a period of days and weeks. What he found was simple, but revolutionary: his memory deteriorated surprisingly rapidly. The chart is called the forgetting curve. It has proven true time and time again.

And we forget far more quickly than we realize: Exponentially. Even after a few days, we’ve likely forgotten a large percentage of what we studied. In a week, the vast majority is lost. This is why exactly people we get so frantic when it comes time to cram: we have to learn the material all over again. It almost seems impossible to escape from. It also explains Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader!

But There Is Hope: The Review Efficiency Effect

Relearning the material likely did not take as long as learning it initially. If it didn’t, a full week of studying would not be enough for months of learning. And we passed the exam.

Then promptly forgot the material all over again.

Yet this is the beginning of the end of our old enemy, the forgetting curve. If relearning is quicker than learning, then reviewing another time will be even quicker. Here we have discovered a crucial piece of intelligence: Reviewing information becomes more efficient the more we engage in it. There are many academic terms and explanations that describe how and why this occurs—which I will cover later—and these are beyond the scope of this article. So forgive me as I dub this (unofficially) as the review efficiency effect.

Enter: The Spacing Effect

The spacing effect in a nutshell: we remember better if things we study repeatedly over a period of time, rather than in one massed clump. And effect of spacing on the forgetting curve is remarkable. Obviously the forgetting curve will begin again when you review. But every time restarts, the forgetting curve becomes shallower. Every time you review a piece of material, it will take longer to forget.

Say Hello to Your New Superpower: Spaced Repetition

Spaced repetition is simply reviewing learned material in a specific schedule. This is your new superpower.

But for maximum efficiency, we must do this before the forgetting curve takes its toll. Remember that the forgetting curve is an exponential beast. You lose most of what you learned within the first week after studying. Think about it this way: The day after you study, the material will be fresh in your head. It will probably take you about 10 minutes to review more than an hour’s worth of material. But after a week, it may take as long as 30 minutes.

This simple habit is so powerful because it combines the power of the spacing effect and our very own review efficiency effect. With spaced repetition, not only will you remember for longer than before, your review will be shorter after. So your first review was 10 minutes? Your next will take around 5. Then 2-3 minutes. By this time, you might not even need your notes. A brief mental review of 1 minute for a lifetime of remembering? Say your final farewells to the forgetting curve.

The Moment Of Truth: How To Use Spaced Repetition

Here are the common guidelines for spaced repetition:

1. Learn and study something new to your maximum possible comprehension (~1-3 hours)
2. Review the next day (~10 minutes)
3. Review 1 week after previous review (~5 minutes)
4. Review 1 month after previous review (~2-3 minutes)
5. Review as you feel necessary (~1-2 minutes)

These guidelines are not set in stone. The guidelines above describe what is called expanding retrieval practice, a common application of spaced repetition. Psychologists differ in their opinions of the best ways to apply spaced repetition.

Further, every subject of study (academic, business, sports, music, etc.) will impact any individual differently. For example, if a subject is especially difficult, you will want to compress the time scale (e.g. 24 hours, 2 days, 5 days, 1 week, etc.). This is why it is important to experiment with spaced repetition to suit your own needs. It will most likely be the subject of a future post.