The Spacing Effect is a powerful principle in how humans retain information, and it can help you reduce your study time significantly and improve your aviation knowledge recall. Studies show 1.5 to 2x better retention when spaced practice is used.
The Challenge
There are 800–1,200 discrete knowledge elements to be well prepared for the Private Pilot Airplane (PAR) written exam. Instrument Rating, Commercial, CFI, and ATP tests each have 1,200+. This represents a very large volume of knowledge one must master, often in a relatively short period of time.
How the Spacing Effect Works
Studying the same topic in a short period of time, such as in a single day, signals to your brain that the information is important but mainly for short-term recall.
When learning happens all at once such as during massed practiced sessions, the material stays in working memory for a while, which can create the illusion that you’ve mastered it. But because the brain was never forced to retrieve that information after some forgetting has occurred, the memory trace remains weak and fades quickly.
Spacing changes this process: when you revisit the same material after some time has passed, especially when you’re starting to forget it. Your brain has to work to retrieve the information. This effortful recall strengthens the neural connections associated with that knowledge and signals to the brain that the information is important enough to store in long-term memory.
Each time you successfully recall the information after a delay, the memory becomes stronger and more durable. Over time, the intervals between reviews can grow longer while the knowledge remains easier to retrieve.
This is why spaced learning is so powerful: instead of repeatedly reviewing information you already remember, it focuses your effort on the moments when retrieval is slightly difficult. This is when learning is strongest.
The Counterintuitive Secret to Remembering What You Study
This goes beyond simply avoiding cramming or starting to study early. Not cramming and giving yourself time to study will definitely help, and everyone knows this. If you simply spread your studying out instead of trying to learn everything in a short period of time, you’ll already get much better results.
But there’s a tactic most people don’t use that is incredibly powerful: purposesly and strategically space out your review sessions at the optimal frequency.
In fact, the closer you come to forgetting something, and then recall it, the stronger the memory becomes. When recalling information is difficult, it forces your brain to work harder, which helps cement that knowledge into long-term memory.
So paradoxically, the closer you get to forgetting something, the better you’ll remember it after reviewing it.
That’s why we built Sapienza: to maximize the spacing effect while still allowing you to study every day. Instead of reviewing everything constantly, Sapienza focuses your time on the highest-yield material. Our algorithm automatically calculates the ideal spacing between review sessions so each concept is reviewed at the optimal time.
Even without a tool like Sapienza, you can still leverage the spacing effect by starting your studying early and intentionally creating gaps between review sessions. For example, you try studying different topics on different days and gradually increase the time between reviews.
Insterested in trying Sapienza's spaced repetition system? Learn more about it here!