Hello, and welcome to another memory and metacognition update!I've had a really good trip to the Czech Republic and Germany. In particular, the EARLI SIG11 conference was pretty awesome. I love this organisation because the research shared is so applied and so technically skilled. If you like the sound of it, consider taking a look at the main EARLI conference which takes place in Greece next August. I wrote last time about desirable difficulties, and now I want to briefly explain why these help.The key thing is that real-life situations where we need to use our knowledge and skills are often quite different from classroom practice. Typically (though not always):Classroom practice happens straight after an explanation, while real-life use happens after a delay.Classroom practice is quite predictable and recognisable in its format.Classroom practice does not require you to remember/retrieve older learning out of context.The reason that desirable difficulties help is that they make practice more similar to real life. Instead of being predictable, passive and short-term, it becomes varied, active, and requires the retrieval of previously-learned memory and skills.That is why things like the spacing effect, variation and retrieval practice are useful.I focus on a couple of these phenomena especially in this blog post: