Use the ‘Von Restorff Effect’ When Studying Difficult Concepts

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Memory is incredibly complex, which is probably why it’s been studied and researched so much—and why researchers who make big discoveries about how it functions get phenomena named after them. A great example of this: the Von Restorff effect, which refers to our brains’ acuity for remembering distinctive pieces of information over more uniform ones, a fact discovered by a German psychiatrist named Hedwig von Restorff. It’s an interesting fact of biology, but it can also be very useful to know when you’re studying a difficult concept. Here’s why, and how to put the Von Restorff effect to good use.

What is the Von Restorff effect?

In previous articles, I’ve discussed various memory effects you can capitalize on when you study, like the primacy effect, the Proust effect, and the production effect. All of these begin with a nice, a round-looking “P" and the consonant blend of "Pr-." If I add the Von Restorff effect to that list, it will stand out solely because of the variety in its name—the rigid angle of that “V" and the hard sound of the Restorff. Because of this, you’re more likely to remember the Von Restorff effect when asked to name the four memory phenomena we just went over—and that’s the Von Restorff effect in action.

In the simplest terms, it is an “isolation effect” that ensures your brain will remember an item in a list if it has a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other entries on the list. When studying, you can achieve this effect by changing the meaningfulness of an item or a piece of information in some way, whether by color, size, font choice, or another approach.

How to use the Von Restorff effect to remember what you study

The good news is that, unlike when you try to harness the power of other memory-based study techniques, this one is pretty straightforward. It's almost too simple, which is why you might not be familiar with it or ever have considered finding ways to use it. Once you realize the simplicity of this concept, it’s easy to find ways to work it into your study habits.

• In your notes, use a highlighter specifically to highlight words or concepts you need to remember for a test. Color-coding your notes is a supremely helpful studying technique on its own because even taking the time to choose the colors and their meanings helps you focus.

• When using flashcards, write concepts and words you’re having a hard time grasping in a different color. If you're using the Leitner method (which you should be), you can rewrite or recreate cards every time you drill them. With that technique, you move your cards into piles every time you get them right or wrong, then study the piles at different frequencies, focusing on ones you know less often than ones that are giving you trouble. Every few times you move a card up or down into a pile, try rewriting or recreating it with a different text color. If a card is red but your color for easy ones is blue, you'll be instantly reminded that this is one you recently struggled with, which can help you lock in and pull the information from your memory using active recall.

• When studying with others and talking through the material (or reading aloud from your notes), try associating a unique motion—like a specific hand gesture—with the concepts you’re discussing.

• Use a shape, like a circle or box, to outline key parts of your notes or textbook materials. Do this when you're mind-mapping, especially, so all your mind maps are uniform. Dates can be in squares, vocab words in circles, and so on. To make quick and efficient mind maps, I recommend an app like Xmind.

• Also when mind-mapping, move the circle containing the most important concepts (or the one you’re struggling to grasp) to a more removed part of your page, differentiating it from the rest of the clusters visually. I do a version of this with my to-do list, which is written on a whiteboard on the fridge. Unusual things, like a doctor's visit or something I need to buy but don't usually get on my weekly trip to the grocery store, get written off to the side. They're more notable that way, drawing my attention away from the larger block of text and reminding me, over and over, that I have to do them. By the time doctor's appointment day rolls around or I'm in the store trying to remember my list, those are seared into my brain.

• If you're revising your notes, use different text styles. This is something I did all the time in college, even when taking notes in class. I would bold anything a professor led into by announcing, "This will be on the test." I would turn vocab words purple. Even if you're hand-writing (which you should be!), you can draw squiggly underlines under certain ideas, circle others ... you get the point. Get zany with it, but keep it uniform. If you draw a big box around one date, do it to all of them. If you draw arrows pointing to a state law and a circle around a federal one, do it to all of them.

The goal is to differentiate the things you need or struggle to remember using color, motion, shape, or even orientation. Setting certain ideas or words apart will make them stick in your brain better, no matter how you do it.

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