Do you "exercise" your memory?

One key for being a successful quizzer is figuring out the best way for YOU to study in order to retain. But once you have figured that out, there is still more you can do in order to retain and remember what you have learned. A new study suggests the best thing we can do is to "exercise our memory" by taking a few minutes after studying to consciously try to remember what we just learned. Like a muscle, our brain works best when we exercise those pieces we want to keep strong.

One group engaged in elaborative study using concept maps while a second group practiced retrieval; they read the texts, then put them away and practiced freely recalling concepts from the text.
After an initial study period, both groups recalled about the same amount of information. But when the students returned to the lab a week later to assess their long-term learning, the group that studied by practicing retrieval showed a 50 percent improvement in long-term retention above the group that studied by creating concept maps.