Study: Cramming Works for SATs, But Not Long Term
I always suspected this was true, but now there is scientific research showing that you can study too much for nothing. I just wish someone had told me that in college.
Cognitive Daily reports on a new study about studying by University of South Florida psychologist Doug Rohrer and Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego. The two researchers had groups of students study vocabulary in different ways. Here's a good description from the blog on the Web site of the Association for Psychological Science, which published the research in one of its journals.
So what did they find?
Well, cramming actually makes sense if you're studying for something with a lot of questions on stuff you might not need to know forever, like the SATs. The research showed people could retain stuff like that really well for about a week, and then it kind of disappeared from their brains. At four weeks, the advantage that the crammers had over the non-crammers had totally disappeared.
If you want to study for something that you need to know over a long period of time, like medicine or law, let's say, then cramming is not a good idea. Instead, building in breaks between studying helps students retain knowledge over a much longer period of time. If you really want to remember something, "massing knowledge" is your worst option.
This may explain why I can't remember a thing from my college physics or calculus courses.
11:44 AM ET | 08-29-2007 | permalink
