(I looked because I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but apparently not a full post, so here we go.)
If we want our learning to stick, it needs to be spaced out over time. But what sorts of things will accomplish this? I like to think of three types, all different forms of reactivating learning.
Reactivating learning is important. At a neural level, we’re generating patterns of activation in conjunction, which strengthens the relationships between these patterns, increasing the likelihood that they’ll get activated when relevant. That’s why context helps as well as concept (e.g. don’t just provide abstract knowledge). And I’ll suggest there are 3 major categories of reactivation to consider: