Why Do Memories Fade?
This is the text version of the interactive 3D documentary. 한국어
Contents · Chapter 2 Why we forget
Review it, forget it slower
Seeing it again, with gaps in between
Again after a day, three days, ten days
Key ideaReview with gaps, and you forget more slowly
The faint yellow line is learning something once. The blue line is reviewing it after one day, three days and ten days. Each review sends the line back up, and after that it falls more and more slowly. Spreading your study over several short sessions lasts longer than one long cram.
Why?When you see something again, your brain treats it as something that keeps being used and strengthens those links. Recalling it just as it starts to slip makes the effort of pulling it out strengthen the memory even more. That studying over several days beats cramming the night before has been shown again and again in hundreds of experiments.
Go furtherThe blue line is not measured; it is an illustrative model. It assumes forgetting gets 3 times slower after each review. Remembering longer when study is spread out is called the spacing effect, and in 2006 a team in the US pulled together hundreds of experiments on it.
View in 3D →Read more: Cepeda et al. (2006), Psychological Bulletin — Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks · Wikipedia: Spacing effect