There two universal methods of how the human brain acquires new information into its long term memory.
There are two memory sections in the brain: Long term memory and short term memory. All new information must enter through the short term memory section first.
Method 1 consists of attaching the new information that is being learned into information that already exists in the long term memory section. Essentially attaching a string and pulling the new short term memory into where the long term memory is. This is most efficient as it has proven to cause instantaneous learning and memory retrieval. The human brain no matter the subject or which method is used to learn, the brain learns through attaching and connecting information to other already existing information. The more connected the new information is to the web of information in the long term memory section the faster this new information is converted into long term memory as well.
The 2nd method is consisted of learning through repetition which is overall extremely less efficient in terms of time over learning(learning information into one’s long term memory). Unless you are someone who has no interest in actually learning(putting what you learn into your long term memory) and is only just generally interested in keeping the information for a short amount of time, then you must always use method 1 whenever necessary and only use method 2 as a backup. Our brain created method 2 to learn new information that is completely irrelevant to anything that is already in our long term memory. Hence the repetition, is the process of grinding the new information until it feels like as if it is a long term memory, making yourself repeatedly learning it over and over again and fooling your brain that you’ve known this information for years even though you’ve known it for a short amount of time. This method is usually unsuccessful at transferring the newly learned information into one’s long term memory due to the fact that it is not attached to any other long term memory.
In conclusion, a lot can be said about someone based on how they prefer to ‘learn’. Some people are quite content with learning information just for the sake of grades and forgetting the information as soon as it is no longer needed. This is a bad example if you are a studying scholar preparing yourself for your career, as information you learn is vital to a career. These people may be uninformative when it comes to information based conversations, and memory retrieval should be slow as well all since they do not use long term memory and simply just relies on short term memory which induces slow memory retrieval. A bad habit can be created from relying too much on method 2, although it is slow and consistent, it induces the brain to overall use its long term memory section less and less, making it harder in the future to input new information to their long term memory. This will put a heavy reliance on short term memory, a weakening cycle, which is why I see it as a bad habit. Long term memory method 1 is much more efficient due to its instantaneous memory retrieval and quick learning speeds.
I emphasize on using Method 1 as much as you can, and use method 2 as a backup to ensure that the new information you are trying to learn actually enter short term memory.
Both methods have their own benefits, method 1 focuses on long term memory while method 2 focuses on short term memory. But method 2 has a decaying aspect as it discourages long term memory.
