Cognition, memory, and education

Based on findings in basic memory and comprehension research, we note implications for enhancing acquisition of factual information. For each implication, we identify techniques that could be implemented to assist students’ acquisition of material in fact-laden courses. We evaluate the potential effectiveness of those techniques for education practice by reviewing translational research that uses educationally relevant materials and test tasks. Specifically, extending basic memory research, we discuss implications from findings on rote repetition (rereading text), elaboration (elaborative interrogation, advanced organizers, and imagery mnemonics), and desirable difficulty (creating interference, spacing, and generation). We suggest a contextualistic framework for understanding when difficulty is and is not desirable, including considerations of transfer-appropriate processing, material-appropriate processing, and individual learner differences. Building on basic research in comprehensive, we identify study methods that are sensitive to individual differences, techniques to improve successful inferencing, and principled text revisions to enhance comprehension. The final section touches on the mnemonic benefits of retrieval and discusses recent research demonstrating the value of using repeated testing to enhance learning (i.e., to improve performance on final criterial tests). The research discussed in this chapter supports the efforts to apply basic findings in memory and cognition to enhance educational practice.