Maximus

My thoughts on spaced learning and its benefits

For those of you who don't know, spaced learning or spaced practice basically means waiting for some time to pass before resuming your studies, as opposed to cramming when you do all your hours at once or with very little rest. There have been many papers written on this subject, and from what I've read my impression is that spaced learning is much more beneficial than cramming. Still, there are some caveats.

For example, I'm not talking about spaced retrieval, because the results I've seen that came from studies on spaced retrieval didn't seem very promising, and they are described in this ScienceDirect article. Then, there's this notion of metacognitive control, as described in this Columbia University PDF. And it means that when adult students don't choose to study with the help of spaced learning, and instead are forced to do it, then they get little to no benefit from it. Interestingly enough, children do benefit from involuntarily studying with spaced learning, but not nearly as much as they would if they chose the practice themselves. Of course, adults benefit from spaced learning as well, provided it's their choice.

In this article on spaced learning it was found that the spaced group performed better than the massed group, and the space that they had was extra two minutes after first reading the principles they had to apply in their tasks. This study also tested working memory depletion, which was necessary to identify whether the benefit from spacing comes from our brain having to replenish its mental energy. They did that by conducting two experiments, and the second one was a lot more memory intensive, but they found that just like the first experiment working memory scores were the same.

This is what they claim based on their p-values and d-values and all kinds of other values, and I'm not exactly sure where they got them from, because mean values from Table 1 and 2 seem contradicting to what the study says. And it seems like mean values from Table 2 actually mean that it was harder for the massed group to keep all that complex information without taking breaks. So logically it would follow that spacing might help with relieving your memory. But I don't really know and I'm not a scientist but if I spent more time on it I would probably figure it out.

Anyway, I've also been practicing spaced learning and I can't say I've noticed a significant difference or improvement in my studies. I'm pretty sure it brings either the same or better results than massed or crammed learning, provided you spend the same amount of hours. I would recommend trying it. Also, read this Substack article on spaced learning if you want to learn more.