Every research finding quoted in this book comes from one of these sources. Each one comes with its limits, because knowing how strong the evidence is forms part of understanding it.
Every source is here, with a link you can click wherever one exists: 45 links to the original papers, chapter by chapter, each with the limits the book states.
The book's citations were checked against Crossref and publisher records on 6 October 2026.
Bower & Clark (1969), Narrative stories as mediators for serial learning doi.org/10.3758/BF03332778, Psychonomic Science. Students who made stories later recalled 93% of the words, against 13%. Recall straight after learning was the same for both groups, and the study was small.
Ebbinghaus (1885), Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. Murre & Dros (2015), Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120644, PLOS ONE. Both used one person learning nonsense syllables.
Link for Ebbinghaus (1885): Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, in the 1913 English translation, at Classics in the History of Psychology (York University)
Draganski and colleagues (2004), Neuroplasticity: changes in grey matter induced by training doi.org/10.1038/427311a, Nature. A small study, and the changes faded when practice stopped.
McDaniel & Einstein (1986), Bizarre imagery as an effective memory aid doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.12.1.54, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. The benefit shows mainly when bizarre pictures are mixed with ordinary ones.
Roediger (1980), The effectiveness of four mnemonics in ordering recall doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.6.5.558, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory. Pegs and places did best for recall in order, and story links came second.
Maguire and colleagues (2003), Routes to remembering doi.org/10.1038/nn988, Nature Neuroscience, a small study of memory champions. Dresler and colleagues (2017), Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.003, Neuron. Training was 40 half-hour sessions over six weeks, gains held four months later, and all the trainees were young men.
Told by the Roman writer Cicero in De Oratore, about two thousand years ago.
We found no good classroom study of this method. Its support comes from long use by memory competitors.
Morris, Jones & Hampson (1978), An imagery mnemonic for the learning of people's names doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1978.tb01663.x, British Journal of Psychology. Recall was 0.79 against 0.42, in a short laboratory test.
Atkinson & Raugh (1975), An application of the mnemonic keyword method to the acquisition of a Russian vocabulary doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.1.2.126, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory. The keywords were supplied by the researchers.
Dunlosky and colleagues (2013), Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266, Psychological Science in the Public Interest. A review of ten methods.
Karpicke, Butler & Roediger (2009), Metacognitive strategies in student learning doi.org/10.1080/09658210802647009, Memory. A survey of 177 university students.
Roediger & Karpicke (2006), Test-enhanced learning doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x, Psychological Science. University students reading prose passages.
Cepeda and colleagues (2006), Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354, Psychological Bulletin. It covers 317 experiments, all on recalling words and facts.
Rohrer & Taylor (2007), The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning doi.org/10.1007/s11251-007-9015-8, Instructional Science, with 18 students. Kornell & Bjork (2008), Learning concepts and categories doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x, Psychological Science.
Rubinstein, Meyer & Evans (2001), Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.27.4.763, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Adults doing simple laboratory tasks.
Sanbonmatsu and colleagues (2013), Who multi-tasks and why? doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0054402, PLOS ONE. How good people thought they were at multitasking didn't match how they did on a test. 277 university students.
Ward and colleagues (2017), Brain drain doi.org/10.1086/691462, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. A repeat by Ruiz Pardo & Minda (2022) doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103717 in Acta Psychologica found no effect. A pooled analysis by Böttger and colleagues (2023) doi.org/10.3390/bs13090751 in Behavioral Sciences found a small one.
Vasilev, Kirkby & Angele (2018), Auditory distraction during reading doi.org/10.1177/1745691617747398, Perspectives on Psychological Science. All the effects were small.
Diekelmann & Born (2010), The memory function of sleep doi.org/10.1038/nrn2762, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, a review. Gillen-O'Neel, Huynh & Fuligni (2013), To study or to sleep? doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01834.x, Child Development, based on diaries kept by the students themselves. Paruthi and colleagues (2016), Recommended amount of sleep for pediatric populations doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.5866, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, an expert panel's recommendation.
Chang and colleagues (2012), The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.02.068, Brain Research. It pools 79 studies, and the average effect was very small.
Cowan (2001), The magical number 4 in short-term memory doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01003922, Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The exact number is still debated. The older figure of about seven digits comes from Miller (1956), "The magical number seven, plus or minus two", Psychological Review. Chase & Simon (1973), Perception in chess doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90004-2, Cognitive Psychology, with three players.
Link for Miller (1956): The magical number seven, plus or minus two doi.org/10.1037/h0043158
Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014), The pen is mightier than the keyboard doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581, Psychological Science. Repeats by Morehead, Dunlosky & Rawson (2019) doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09468-2 in Educational Psychology Review and Urry and colleagues (2021) doi.org/10.1177/0956797620965541 in Psychological Science did not reliably find the handwriting advantage.
Wammes, Meade & Fernandes (2016), The drawing effect doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1094494, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. University students and lists of simple words.
Nesbit & Adesope (2006), Learning with concept and knowledge maps doi.org/10.3102/00346543076003413, Review of Educational Research. Farrand, Hussain & Hennessy (2002), The efficacy of the 'mind map' study technique doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2923.2002.01205.x, Medical Education. Karpicke & Blunt (2011), Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping doi.org/10.1126/science.1199327, Science.
Nielsen and colleagues (2013), An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071275, PLOS ONE.
Nestojko and colleagues (2014), Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0416-z, Memory & Cognition. Fiorella & Mayer (2013), The relative benefits of learning by teaching and teaching expectancy doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2013.06.001, Contemporary Educational Psychology. Both used university students.
Rayner and colleagues (2016), So much to read, so little time doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267, Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Recht & Leslie (1988), Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers' memory of text doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.80.1.16, Journal of Educational Psychology, with 64 pupils and one text.
Brooks (2014), Get excited doi.org/10.1037/a0035325, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Adults, in one research lab.
Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993), The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363, Psychological Review. A later pooled analysis by Macnamara, Hambrick & Oswald (2014) doi.org/10.1177/0956797614535810 in Psychological Science found that practice matters, but less than the original paper argued.
Learning styles: Pashler and colleagues (2008), Learning styles: concepts and evidence doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x, Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The 10% myth: Beyerstein (1999), "Whence cometh the myth that we only use 10% of our brains?", in Mind Myths, edited by S. Della Sala. How common these beliefs are: Dekker and colleagues (2012), Neuromyths in education doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00429, Frontiers in Psychology.
Beyerstein (1999): No free copy online.