Examination — The Science of Learning: What Actually Sticks

1.A friend prepares for a vocabulary test by watching a recorded review video twice, at a comfortable pace, following along easily. On the test she must produce each definition from the word alone. Which act has her studying exercised, and what does that predict?

2.Regroup this string into the largest familiar patterns you can: F B I C I A U S A N B A. For a typical adult, how many chunks does the grouped version occupy in working memory?

3.Using Ebbinghaus's savings method: a poem took 30 minutes to memorize to perfect recitation, and 18 minutes to relearn to the same standard two days later. What is the savings, as a percentage?

4.You want your sense of how well you know a chapter to actually predict next week's test. Which single change to how you judge your own learning helps most?

5.Match each everyday observation to the principle about memory it illustrates.

6.Two groups study the same material and are tested five minutes later: the group that reread scores higher than the group that self-tested. From this course, what should you predict for a test two weeks later, and why?

7.You have just read: 'Coral reefs bleach when warm water drives out the algae that feed them.' Write one closed-book retrieval question whose answer would be 'the algae that feed them.'

8.During review you commit to an answer you feel completely certain of, and it turns out wrong. The correction is in front of you. Compared with a wrong answer you had merely shrugged at, what does the evidence predict for this confident miss?

9.A study compares a tested group against a restudy group. The tested group's mean is 78, the restudy group's mean is 66, and the pooled standard deviation is 20. Compute Cohen's d — the standardized mean difference — to one decimal place.

10.Match each idea from the retrieval unit to its one-line meaning.

11.You need to hold a set of terms for a test 80 days away. Using the rule that the best review gap is roughly 10 to 20 percent of the retention interval, about how many days should a mid-range gap be?

12.Under SM-2 a card comes due at an interval of 10 days. You recall it correctly, and its ease factor is 2.0. What interval, in days, does SM-2 schedule for the next review?

13.You recall a card correctly, but only after a moment's hesitation, and grade it 4. What does SM-2 do with its ease factor?

14.A language app teaches verb endings by drilling all the -ar verbs, then all the -er verbs, then all the -ir verbs, each in its own block. On a mixed final test, students keep applying the wrong ending. What change would help most, and why?

15.In one run of successive relearning, the first session recalls a term to a criterion of 2 correct retrievals, and three later spaced sessions each relearn it to 1 correct retrieval. How many successful retrievals of that term does the whole protocol produce?

16.A beginner who has never been shown a method is handed a shuffled set of problems that all require it, and fails nearly every one. Is the shuffling a desirable difficulty here?

17.You have just read that desert lizards are most active at dawn and dusk rather than midday. Which response is elaborative interrogation, rather than plain rereading?

18.A worked example takes the inequality -2x < 6, divides both sides by -2, and writes x > -3 — flipping the '<' to '>'. In one sentence, self-explain why the direction of the inequality must flip.

19.You are studying how ocean currents carry heat around the globe. Which addition to your notes is genuine dual coding rather than decoration?

20.Order these four cases from the nearest transfer (most similar to what was practiced) to the farthest transfer (most distant).

1. ⋮⋮Solving a practiced equation again with only the numbers changed ↑ ↓
2. ⋮⋮A homework problem that closely resembles the worked example ↑ ↓
3. ⋮⋮Using wave physics learned for water to reason about sound ↑ ↓
4. ⋮⋮Applying a chess strategy to plan the moves of a debate ↑ ↓

21.It is 1 a.m. before an exam. You have already studied the material once this week. You are choosing between one more hour of rereading and one more hour of sleep. What does the evidence favor, and why?

22.As the closing question of this examination, without looking back: deliberate practice tells you WHERE to aim your effort — name that target — and then name three techniques from this course that make the effort stick.