Brain in Business

There's research showing that reminders/reviews help tremendously in the learning process.

But are you aware of any proper research that specifies the repetition points? I've heard about "1 week, 1 months, 3 months and 6 months". But these are such convenient man-made time constructs, and I find it hard to believe that the human brain happens to be wired to replicate these constructs so exactly. After all, I think the human circadian rhythm is more like 25 hours, so surely a review at 25 hours, rather than 24 hours, would be more effective.

Anyone have any documented research?
Thank you,
Resli

Hi Resli
It would be great to hear what other research people have available.
To hand I have the following info - may need you to google further.

1. Counting Sheep: The Science and Pleasures of Sleep and Dreams by Paul Martin - useful research about sleep and learning
2. 'Transfer of Training' by Mary Broad and John Newstrom - a study about the learner, the trainer, the learners manager
at 3 key time intervals before, during, after training
3. The Learning Brain by Eric Jensen - research in there by Edelman, O'keefe and Nadel about how 'memory requires repeated rehearsal in different contexts'

I believe the 24hour, 1 week etc comes from a study from Tony Buzan but have failed to find the info at moment - will continue to look.

My thoughts are that these figures are not designed to match our circadian rhythms etc and are indeed 'convenient man-made time constructs' designed to fit into our lives so that we can actually remember to do some 'reviewing'.

In the real world I suspect very few people stick rigidly to the 24 hours, 1 week etc anyway. After Maximising Impact we ask people to do a 24 hour review but we know that often it's a 15 hours, 36 hours or sometime in the next 48 hours - it doesn't seem to matter that it's precisely 24. People still retain far more than they thought they would because we've done lots of reviews during the day. And then when we do a week, month, 3 month review it probably depends on when they open their email to some degree.

Recently one participant reviewed her learning during a 'boring meeting' (her words) and found 2 weeks later she still remembered 39 out of 52 facts with no prompts.

The circadian rhythm cycle of 25 hours has also been questioned recently - some info in the sleep book I think.

I'll look forward to your thoughts and those of others.

Warm regards,
Stella

I tried looking into this a few years ago and, if I remember rightly, Peter Russell was quoting Tony Buzan and Tony Buzan was quoting Peter Russell! I e-mailed Tony Buzan's office a couple of times but did not get a definitive answer about the source of the research.

After digging a bit deeper, I did come across Ebbinghaus' 'Theory of Forgetting' which seemed relevant.

Regards
kathey

Hello
Isn't it interesting how people refer back to people who refer back to people until eventually you dig out the research which is pretty ancient.

Ebbinghaus died in about 1909 so this research is very old but it still seems to stand as the definitive answer - and is who we'd eventually tracked the info about the forgetting curve to.

Part of me thinks this is great - people haven't changed that much after all and part of me thinks someone really needs to publish some more up to date research.

Happy reviewing everyone.
Regards,
Stella

Thank you so much! I very much appreciate your (plural) thoughts and research.

All the best,
Resli

Hi Resli

Just weighing in with some rather late thoughts.

Originally, I believe I read about 5 review points in Colin Rose's earlier book 'Accelerated Learning' - I haven't got a personal copy of this to refer back to, I'm afraid. He would certainly have either researched extensively himself, or quoted from someone who had.

His 5 were - within 10 minutes, 24h, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months.

Elsewhere I had read others who had put in a 3-month review; and as an 'expert' on memory loss (i.e. my own!), that made sense to me, because from 1 month to 6 months is a very long time!

And we inserted a new number two - at the end of the learning session. Based on our experience of how much learning is typically contained in a brain friendly learning day, it seemed a good idea to help the brain to start its process of sorting things out overnight, by recapping what has gone before. As we do this in a variety of celebratory and memorable ways, it's also a great motivator for the learners.

As Stella says, in practice these reviews may happen at all sorts of different times, and are artifical constructs to some extent. What is important for me is that as learning facilitators, we are really embedding the concept of reviewing learning as an important way to support long-term memory, and these suggestions give learners a timeline on which to hang their reviews on.

And we've had learners insert their own timelines - for example during the boring powerpoint-based meeting Stella also mentions - the point is for me, that we all review regularly in order to keep important learning for us in the forefront of our brains.

Thank you Resli.

Ann