Distributed practice
The opposite, massed practice, consists of fewer, longer training sessions and is generally a less effective method of learning.
[citation needed] Influential German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus first observed the effect of distributed learning, and published his findings in Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology.
They researched the effectiveness of distributed practice by teaching postmen how to type using a new system on a typewriter and comparing massed and spaced learning schedules.
By equally distributing the amount of practice of a given activity over a period of time, you will increase the efficiency of learning that skill.
Memories that were poorly consolidated through inefficient means of practice will be harder to recall, and will reduce the learning achieved through expanding retrieval.
Distributed practice directly influences the efficiency of expanding recall, as it provides the strongest basis for memory consolidation, from which to draw needed information.
[10][8] Cornoldi and Longoni have even found a significant spacing effect in a forced-choice recognition memory task when nonsense shapes were used as target stimuli.
[11][10] Russo proposed that with cued memory of unfamiliar stimuli, a short-term perceptually based repetition priming mechanism supports the spacing effect.
Upon a recognition memory test, there was no spacing effect found for the nonwords presented in different fonts during study.
Mammarella, Russo, & Avons[13] also demonstrated that changing the orientation of faces between repeated presentations served to eliminate the spacing effect.
Unfamiliar faces do not have stored representations in memory, thus the spacing effect for these stimuli would be a result of perceptual priming.
Changing orientation served to alter the physical appearance of the stimuli, thus reducing the perceptual priming at the second occurrence of the face when presented in a massed fashion.
Additionally, the variable encodings are thought to be a direct result of contextual variations which are not present in massed repetitions.
To test the encoding variability theory, Bird, Nicholson and Ringer (1978)[14] presented subjects with word lists that either had massed or spaced repetitions.
If encoding variability is an important mechanism of the spacing effect, then a good advertising strategy might include a distributed presentation of different versions of the same ad.
They also found that at long intervals, varying the presentation of a given ad is not effective in producing higher recall rates among subjects (as predicted by variable encoding).
Research shows individuals with traumatic brain injury often suffer memory deficits due to impairment in the acquisition phase.
Relatively little research has been done examining how learning strategies which benefit healthy people apply to individuals with TBI.
[citation needed] Shaughnessy[17] found that the spacing effect is not robust for twice-presented items after a 24-hour delay in testing.
Bahrick et al.[18] examined the retention of newly learned foreign vocabulary words over a 9-year period, varying both the number of sessions and the space between them.
The Leitner method is another example of studying strategies that take advantage of distributed practice and its associated principles, in this case spaced repetition.
The hippocampus has long been considered the central hub of all memory[citation needed], and therefore responsible for a large majority of learning.
Despite the overwhelming evidence provided by HM's case for the centrality of the hippocampus to memory and learning, he was still able to benefit from the effects of distributed practice with regards to certain tasks.
During HM's formal assessment, he displayed notable improvement on tasks regarding unconscious learning such as the mirror-drawing test, where the patient must trace a star by watching their hand in a mirror.
[20] His improvement in this and other tasks illustrates that the hippocampus is not essential for all forms of learning, including the ability to benefit distributed practice.
Distributed practice exists to a limited degree in animals after the removal of the hippocampus, if the Rhinal cortices are un-damaged.
