Everybody knows forgotten happened with the time passed by, but when does the weakest memory happen and does it have any pattern?
A famous German psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus published his lab report in 1885, after that, research on memory becomes one of the most important fields in psychology and he is the person who found the memory forgotten pattern, that is the Ebbinghaus forgotten Curve which is the result of an experiment.
Three Greek alphabets were made up into one syllable by Ebbinghaus which don’t have any real meaning and were the memory objects for Ebbinghaus. In psychology experiment, using words which have real meaning is not allowed because those meaningful words cause different association to memorize. Every eight meaningless syllables were consisted one group and there are total eight groups and Ebbinghaus was the conner. The aim of experiment is to measure time required to memorize the eight groups of syllables. At first, he spent about 1000 seconds. Next, the time taken was contrasted by 580 seconds to memorize the same eight groups of syllables after 20 minutes and the time saving rate is around 58％, in contrast, the forgotten rate is 42％. The curve represents that the forgotten procession is not balanced, after memorizing, the short period of time, the faster rate of forgetting, similarly, the long period of time, the slower rate of forgetting.
The experiment also shows that the forgetting procession is not only related to time but also the meaning, amounts, or orders of materials, even the physical and mental factors.
As a student, we can use the Ebbinghaus Forgotten Curve properly to study. Better understanding, better memorizing. More industrial, more harvest from the study. So, revision regularly can reduce the forgetting rate from studying. According to different types of students, they need different kinds of revision plan. Memorize just like heating water in the pot. If a pot of water is heating up to 100 Celsius degree, it’s easy to reheat up to 100 Celsius degree if it is 70 Celsius degree than 30 Celsius degree. That means after learning, one day review is easier to review than three days later.