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Comment by jasonpbecker | Hacker News Reader

The best evidence suggests that presenting information multiple times, multiple different ways benefits everyone because it creates a richer set of connections to those ideas and concepts.

It's not the case that one person learns through sights, another sounds, and yet another through movement (roll eyes)-- instead it's the case that doing things multiple ways and multiple times is better for memory.

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A corollary for this is learning the same information in the same manner, but in a different location. Study in your bedroom, on the train, at the library, under a tree in a park, while walking the dog, at the beach at dawn, etc. This removes environmental cues out of the learned material and makes recall much more effective.

Interesting idea.

A thought I had: what if you studied some topic while always listening to the same song on repeat. Could you improve recall by humming the song (or better, playing it)? I would think a study about this has already been done.

Yes. Actually one of the most effective ways would be to study in the same room that you will later be tested in. Basically information is never learned independent of the location and the location bleeds into your memory of the abstract concept. When you think about how memory evolved this makes perfect sense - you want to remember how to fish for example, but also where and when to fish.

The same thing apply to things like addiction where location plays a very strong role in reinforcing the addictive behaviour. One of the ways of helping to overcome addiction is to change your location so the environmental cues are removed.

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