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At some point in our lives, we all act as teachers.
在生活的某个时刻，我们都扮演着老师的角色。
Maybe you're trying to make sure your BFF doesn't fail algebra, or helping your kid with their social studies homework.
也许你在努力确保死党不会在代数课上一团糟，或者帮助你的孩子完成他们的社会学习家庭作业。
Or maybe you're a teacher-teacher who wrestles with classes of students every day, and if you are, let me just say thank you for doing that, because teachers rock, and society would crumble without you.
或者你可能是一位教师，每天都和班上的学生斗智斗勇。如果是这样的话，我想向你说声谢谢，因为老师太棒了，没有老师的话，我们的社会就会崩溃。
Regardless of who or why you're teaching, though, the goal is ultimately for your student or students to retain the information you're trying to pass on.
不管你的学生是谁，也不管你为什么教书，老师的最终目标都是让学生记住你教授的信息。
And you might think you know how to make that happen.
你也许认为自己知道如何实现这一目标。
But it turns out that a lot of classic teaching wisdom isn't backed by science.
但事实证明，许多经典的教学智慧并没有得到科学的支持。
Like, you might have heard you should be super enthusiastic.
比如，你可能听说过你应该超级热情。
But while enthusiastic teaching seems to improve course evaluations — including ratings of the textbook, weirdly enough — it doesn't seem to do much for students' grades.
不过，尽管激昂地教学似乎能提高对课程的评估，包括对教材的评分，但奇怪的是，它似乎对提高学生的成绩没有多大作用。
Or, maybe you've been told you have to tailor you lessons to fit your pupil's quote "learning style".
或者，也许有人曾告诉你，必须根据学生的“学习风格”调整课程。
Well, turns out there isn't really any evidence that that's important, either.
事实证明，也没有任何证据证明这一点很重要。
But psychologists have been studying teaching for decades, and all that research has stumbled on a few tried-and-true methods to improve teaching.
但是，心理学家们几十年来一直在研究教学，所有研究都在无意中发现了一些行之有效的方法来改进教学。
Some of them might surprise you. Like, that cramming is bad.
其中有一些可能会让你大吃一惊。比如说，那种死记硬背的方法很糟糕。
And quizzes are good. So today, we're going to be talking about three ways you can use psychology to be a better teacher — or even a better student.
测验则是种不错的方法。所以今天，我们将讨论三种使用心理学的方法来成为一位更好的老师，甚至是做个更好的学生。
One of the most well-supported tricks to up information retention is to use a technique called the spacing effect, or spaced practice.
提高信息保留率最有效的技巧是使用一种称为间隔效应的技术，或者称为间隔练习。
The idea is that if you have an hour to study, you'll do better if you can split up that hour up — like 30 minutes on two different days.
这个观点是，如果你有一个小时的学习时间，那么把这一小时分开，比如每天30分钟，做两天，那么效果会更好。
And you might even want to space those days weeks apart!
甚至可以分不同的周进行！
There have been hundreds of studies on the spacing effect — we've known about it since the 1880s.
关于间隔效应的研究已经有数百个了，人们在19世纪80年代就知道了。
But, one early example published in 1925 showed it by having students try to memorize the ephebic oath — something every ancient Greek citizen knew, but no one in the study had heard before.
1925年发表的一个早期的例子表明了这种效应，研究中让学生们努力记住成年誓言，每个古希腊公民都知道的它，但参与研究的人中没人听说过。
Half the participants were read the oath 6 times in a row — the other half heard it 3 times each on two separate days which were three days apart.
一半参与者连续听六次誓言，另一半每天听三次，听两天，之间间隔三天。
When they were tested immediately after the readings, it seemed like having the study sessions all massed together improved people's memory a little bit.
他们在阅读完成后立即进行测试时，似乎把所有课程集中在一起学习，可以稍微提高学生的记忆力。
But on a test 4 weeks later, the group who studied with a 3 day gap in between did much better.
但在4周后的一次测试中，之间间隔三天学习的学生成绩更好。
This seems to be a general trend, too — if you want to remember information for longer, space your studying out with bigger gaps.
这似乎也是一个普遍的趋势，如果想把信息记得更长久，就要拉长学习间隔的时间。
One study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General in 2011 recruited 335 students and assigned them to practice learning material according to one of 5 schedules.
一项发表在《实验心理学期刊》上的研究：2011年，杰尼拉招募了335名学生，并根据五种时间表中的一种安排让他们练习学习材料。
The shortest was to try to get everything done in about 10 days — the longest took about 38 days to study, with practicing scheduled about a week apart.
最短的组是尝试在10天内完成所有材料的学习，最长的组是学习大约38天，练习时间间隔约为一周。
And though everyone who spaced out their practice did better than a control group, those who spread out their study the most did the best on a test given 4 months after their final study session.
尽管分开练习的人都比对照组做得更好，但在他们完成最后一次学习四个月后，那些分开练习的学习者中，每次练习之间的间隔越久，在测试中的分数也越高。
This effect seems to work across all kinds of things you can learn from memorizing facts, to motor skills, to classroom material.
这种效果似乎适用于记忆事实、运动技能、课堂材料中学习等各种类型的学习。
It even seems like rats, bees, and fruit flies learn this way!
似乎老鼠、蜜蜂和果蝇也都是这样学习的！
But it's not entirely clear why it works.
但还不完全清楚为什么这种方法能够发挥作用。
One idea is that whenever you learn something new, you tend to think about it a few times later on for no particular reason.
一个观念认为，学习新东西时，你往往会在学后思考几次，这么做没有什么特别的原因。
Memory researchers call this "autonomous reactivation."
研究记忆的科学家称之为“自主再激活”。
When you space out your practice, you get more of this autonomous reactivation — which for your brain, is just more practice.
当你把练习分开进行时，你就会做更多次的自主再激活，这对大脑来说，就是进行了更多次的练习。
There's also the possibility that if you space out practice, you might be studying the material in multiple contexts — like, you're hearing about it at home instead of a classroom, or even just learning different things around it.
还有一种可能性是，如果你把练习时间分开，就可能在多种情境下学习这些材料。比如，你会在家学，而不是在教室学，甚至还会学到与这些知识相关的不同内容。
That means you'll have more associations with the memory you have of the content, and that gives you a better chance of retrieving it at the right time.
这意味着将产生与所记忆的内容更多的联系，可以让你在适当的时间检索。
Another explanation is that when you learn something, you stimulate dendritic spines on neurons in a part of your brain called the hippocampus.
另一种解释是，当你学习东西时，会刺激到大脑中海马体上神经元的树突棘。
These spines reach out to connect to other neurons, and when you stimulate them, you get more connections that last longer, which improves your memory.
这些树突棘与其他神经元相连接，它们受到刺激时，就会得到持续时间更久、也更多的连接，这样能改善记忆力。
And the hippocampus is one of the primary brain regions involved in memory, so the connections there matter a lot.
海马体是大脑中与记忆相关的一个主要区域，所以那里的连接非常重要。
The thing is, these neurons need a bit of time to recover before they can fire again the same way.
问题是，这些神经元需要在以同样的方式再次放电前，花一点时间来恢复。
That bit of time is called a refractory period.
那一段时间被称为反拗期。
And basically, when you study the same material right away, your brain keeps stimulating the neurons during that period — and that isn't as good for maintaining the connections with other neurons as stimulating them after they've had a chance to reset entirely.
大体上来说，当你马上开始学习同一种材料时，大脑在此期间会不断刺激神经元，这对于维持与其他神经元的联系来说，不如在它们完全重置后刺激它们那样好。
But research on neurons in a hippocampus is hard to do on humans — so those ideas are mostly drawn from research on rats and flies.
但是，要对人类海马体中的神经元进行研究比较困难。所以，这些观点大多来自对老鼠和苍蝇的研究。
Even if we don't know exactly why spacing works, your students — who probably aren't rats or flies — can benefit from it.
即使我们不知道为什么间隔时间会起作用，但学生们可不是老鼠或苍蝇，他们确实能从中受益。
Like, you can try spending more time in class reviewing older material.
比如，你可以试着在课堂上花更多的时间复习旧材料。
Devote a bit of time each day to covering material that was first introduced yesterday — or a week ago.
每天花点时间来回想昨天或一周前学习的材料。
There's some evidence this really works in classrooms, too.
有证据表明在教室里这样学习也很有效。
One teaching method called "direct instruction" focuses 90% of every class day on practicing older material.
一种称为“直接教学”的方法，是将90%的课堂时间用于集中练习旧材料。
And it was found to improve kids' achievement test scores — particularly, in a poor school district with historically low reading scores.
研究发现，这种方法可以提高孩子们的考试成绩，尤其是对那些贫困学区阅读分数很低的学生有效。
If you're a student, this can help you too.
如果你是学生，这对你也有帮助。
The lesson is basically: don't cram.
要记住的是不要死记硬背。
I know!
我知道！
Cramming for exams is just how it's done.
学生们总是靠死记硬背去考试。
I did it a lot, and it helped me when I needed it too, but it did not help me retain that information in a long term.
我常常这么做，需要的时候这种方法帮助了我，但却无法让我长时间记住这些信息。
So, if you've got a test coming up in 3 weeks, you'll probably do better to spread your study time out and do a little each week than to try to fit it all into the night before.
所以，如果你要在3周内要参加一场考试，如果你把学习时间分散，每周复习一点，可能要比考试前一晚全看一遍会考得更好。
And when you're doing that spread-out studying, you might try spending a good chunk of it quizzing yourself.
采用分散法学习时，你可能会尝试多花些时间来测试你自己。
That's because of what's called the "testing effect" — or retrieval-based learning.
这是因为所谓的“测试效果”或检索式学习方法。
Imagine you've got 2 hours to devote to studying something, and you're trying to decide how to split that up.
想象一下，你用两小时来学习一些知识，你正试着决定如何将这些内容分开。
You can either spend the whole time reading through your notes and textbook — or, take half of the time and use it to quiz yourself on what you studied the first half.
你可以把整个时间都花在看笔记和课本上，或者花一半时间测试你在上部分时间中学到的内容。
Research shows you're probably better off if you actually spend less time studying — and more time testing yourself.
研究表明，如果少花些时间学习，而用更多时间测试自己，那你可能学得更好。
Which isn't fun, because that's the part that's more stressful.
这一点也不好玩，因为这让人感到压力更大。
But that's right!
但它却是对的！
Tests and quizzes are a good thing.
考试和测验是好事。
And they don't just determine what you know — they actually help you learn.
这样做不仅能确定你知道什么，还有助于学习。
Though this is another effect we've known about for a while, a clear example of it was published in Psychological Science in 2006.
尽管这是我们已知的另一种效应，但有关它的清晰实例却发表于2006年的《心理科学》上。
Researchers recruited 120 students and had them all try to memorize two short passages.
研究人员招募了120名学生，让他们都试着记住两段短文。
One passage they memorized by studying in two 7 minute chunks.
其中一段学习七分钟，共学两次。
The other passage, they were told to study for the first 7 minutes — and then they were tested on what they could recall from it for 7 more minutes.
对于另一段，研究人员告诉学生第一次学七分钟，再用七分钟时间测验他们能记住多少所学的内容。
Then they got a final test on both passages.
然后对这两段进行最终测试。
If they were asked to recall the passages 5 minutes later, just rereading the material for that extra 7 minutes did give them a slight edge
如果在学习完成五分钟后要求他们回忆这些段落，那么在额外的七分钟内复读材料确实带给他们一些优势
— they remembered about 81% of the passage, as compared to 75% of the passage they were read for 7 minutes and were quizzed on for 7 minutes.
他们能记住大约81%的内容，而七分钟阅读加七分钟测验的学生记住75%的内容。
But 2 days or a week after the study sessions, having a pre-test improved their scores compared to the one they just studied — by about 14% at both of those time points.
但是在研究结束后两天或一周后，与只进行学习的学生相比，进行预试可以把他们的分数在两个时间点上都提高14%。
What's also cool is that the effect isn't limited to what's on the tests.
而且这种效果不仅限于测试中的内容，这一点也超酷。
