THE VON RESTORFF EFFECT WILL HELP YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU'VE READ

By Akande Aanuoluwapo Favour

If you have ten green apples in a bowl and just one red one. Which one will you notice first and which one would you tend to remember later? Of course, it will be the distinct red one. That's basically what the Von Restorff effect is all about; the more something stands out from the crowd, the more it's likely to be seen.

  This theory was named after its discoverer, a German psychologist called Hedwig von Restorff and it's also called the "isolation effect". Now, that we know the main idea behind the theory, how can you apply this theory in your studies?

It makes sense that the other name for this theory is the "isolation effect". So, when you are studying items off a list or you have to memorize a list of concepts, the idea is to separate or differentiate the difficult words or concepts based on the length of the word, colour, size font, etc.

Let's go into practical ways to do this.

1. You can use your highlighter to highlight words that are difficult for you to memorize. This way you're differentiating them based on color.

2. You can also differentiate a word or concept based on how long or short it is. Is the longest or shortest compared to the others?

3. Circling or underlying difficult words or concepts can also work for you.

4. Let's assume you are reading aloud or you are reading with friends, you can use specific hand gestures to remember a particular word or concept.

5. And, if you use flashcards to read, write the difficult words in a different colour of flashcards.

Although only 5 ways to practice the Von Restorff theory are mentioned in this article, you can also include your creative ways to use the Von Restorff effect in your studying.

Depending on what method you want to use, the main aim of the Von Restorff's effect in studying is to help you distinguish words from one another in other to aid effective remembrance.