Learning Modality & Memory Retention Lab

Study Modality

Item Type Being Learned

Learner's Preferred Style

Repetitions (spaced study) 1

Time Since Study

Days elapsed 0.0 d

Live Readouts

Memory strength S

— d

Retention now

100%

Items ≥ 50% retained

30 / 30

Congruency factor

—

How it works

Each of the 30 nodes in the grid is one studied item. Its memory trace decays with time following Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve:

R(t) = e^(-t / S)

where R(t) is retention probability at t days and S is memory strength in days. S is built from three real, evidence-based factors:

S = S0 · C(modality, item type) · (1 + 0.4·(n-1))^0.6 · M

C(modality, item type) — dual-coding congruency (Paivio): concrete items encode best visually, abstract/verbal items encode best auditorily (through language), and procedural/motor items encode best kinesthetically — this is a real, replicated effect.
(1 + 0.4(n-1))^0.6 — the spacing effect: each extra repetition strengthens the trace, with diminishing returns.
M — the meshing bonus. The popular "learning styles" claim says matching material to a learner's self-reported preferred style (e.g. a "visual learner") should boost retention on top of item-type congruency. Toggle it ON to see that hypothesis modelled (M = 1.5 on a match); toggle it OFF to see the actual research consensus (Pashler et al., 2008; Rogowsky et al., 2015): controlled studies find no such meshing effect once item-type congruency is accounted for, so M = 1.

Node color/height/size encode current retention: green & tall = strongly remembered, red & flat = forgotten. Small per-item noise represents natural item-to-item difficulty variance.

Strongly retained Partially forgotten Forgotten

t = 0.0 days

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