Exams at classroom have bidirectional effects on the long-term memory of an unrelated graphical task

Abstract

The influence of a given event on long-term memory formation of another one has been a relevant topic of study in the neuroscience field in recent years. Students at school learn contents which are usually tested in exam format. However, exam elevates the arousal state of the students acting as a mild stressor that could influence another memory formation ongoing process. Thus, in this study we examine in high school students the effect of exams on long-term retention of unrelated information, learned at different times before or after the exams. Our results show that exams are not innocuous and that they could improve or reduce the retention of temporarily associated content. These effects did not show gender differences. Our findings should alert teachers about the side effects of exams on the learning of other content within the same school day.

Novelty Improves the Formation and Persistence of Memory in a Naturalistic School Scenario

“…These results are in agreement with our previous findings, obtained in elementary schools, showing that novel experiences occurring 1 h but not 4 h before or after a storytelling experience were able to improve a literary LTM (Ballarini et al, 2013). They are also in line with our recent observations regarding mild stress, associated with an exam, which can improve the graphical LTM in this time window (Lopes da Cunha et al, 2018). In addition, here we describe a narrow temporal window very close to the learning moment (immediately before or after it), in which novel experiences were ineffective in enhancing the graphical LTM.…”

Exploration of a novel virtual environment improves memory consolidation in ADHD

“…A similar dependence has also been shown for other salient experiences used in behavioral tagging studies. For example, several animal studies and one human experiment reported that postencoding stress improved weakly encoded memories, but impaired strongly encoded ones [96][97][98][99] .…”

Decision-making under stress: A psychological and neurobiological integrative model

“…Supporting this view, it has been shown that a learning inducing only short-term memory may establish a long-lasting memory if a stressful situation occurs within a critical window close to the learning. This was observed in rodents, for both spatial and aversive memories ( Lopes da Cunha et al, 2018a ; Lopes da Cunha et al, 2021 ), and in humans, with a stressor positively impacting on a graphical long-term memory ( Lopes da Cunha et al, 2018b ). Additionally, stress generally facilitates memory for emotional salient material versus neutral or unrelated contents ( de Kloet et al, 1999 ; Dunsmoor et al, 2015 ; Joëls et al, 2006 ; Payne et al, 2006 ; Sandi, 1998 ).…”