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Definition of “Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve”

Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve provides good insight into the time aspect of permanent knowledge (or germane cognitive load). The longer we can keep information active, the fewer working memory resources we need to use to re-learn what we previously knew.

The below extract is from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve


Forgetting Curve Wikipedia

Forgetting Curve Wikipedia Continued


It is astonishing how quickly we, as humans, forget newly acquired knowledge unless we consciously revisit the learned material. Even more astonishing is that there is little difference between individuals in the rate of forgetting, and differences in individuals’ performance are related to mnemonic representation skills.

From this, we must take into account two ways to increase our memory strength:

  1. Better Memory Representation: mnemonic techniques, visual representations, modeling techniques, and more.

  2. Repetition Based on Active Recall: finding ways to increase the number of times newly acquired knowledge is actively re-used before it is forgotten.

The more information we can store in our permanent memory for a longer period, the less working memory we have to use, the more expertise we build up, and the lower the cognitive load becomes.