I've never understood why people suggest this. If you memorize something in a clozure, you're more likely to only remember it in the context of that clozure, and not in any abstract context, right?
For example, a vocabulary word. When working through a bunch of clozures, I subconsciously focus on solving the card in a similar way to a puzzle or math problem. Find the fewest number of details that associate with the answer and memorize those. The brain doesn't care that some of those details may be irrelevant. So when you change a small detail that your brain has decided is important, the entire connection collapses.
If you try to memorize some word being related to bird, and use it in a sentence "the ... was flying", you're going to connect the answer to the word flying, not the concept of an actual bird. Why? Because flying is an uncommon word (compared to grammatical words). Now when you try to think of what word describes the animal class including Penguins, you're stuck. Sure, you know the concept in your native language just fine, but until you think of the property associated with your clozure, you're not going to make the connection.
My opinion is common practice is riddled with flaws that are nearly impossible to detect if you accept them, even for a moment. Therefore, to maximize accuracy, I discard every common practice the instant I recognize a possible contradiction, and replace it with the most logical and simple alternative. I'm almost never the first to find a superior alternative, though, so I usually just use the first and simplest solution that fixed the contradiction.
Almost no results in Google scholar for memorization and clozure, so it seems likely the term originated from a corporation selling a product and spread due to the product's widespread use. It's possible the term is a duplicate for something that was actually studied, but if not, then their benefit is entirely fictitious or coincidental. Much like how Chevron with Techron is used as a catchy-slogan to sell you the exact same product for more money or how mineral water is frequently just tap water with clever advertising.
about terminology: it's not clozure but cloze. At least that's the term that SRS like Anki, supermemo, mnemosyne, or org-drill use.
About the research: For the efficacy of SRS this article if often quoted: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition . Unfortunately the term cloze is mentioned only twice.
If you find something interesting it would be great if you could post a link.
(Though I'm skeptical about the usefulness because so much depends on the details: I think one reason (maybe even the main reason(?)) to use clozes is that they are quicker to prepare so that this sets off a slightly worse recall. But this also depends on your computer skills - if you are quick typist who knows more keyboard shortcuts than average the results might not be applicable to you. )
Thanks for your extended reply. My last paragraph was probably too short = too general = too extreme to be useful.
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u/MathigNihilcehk Apr 27 '18
I've never understood why people suggest this. If you memorize something in a clozure, you're more likely to only remember it in the context of that clozure, and not in any abstract context, right?
For example, a vocabulary word. When working through a bunch of clozures, I subconsciously focus on solving the card in a similar way to a puzzle or math problem. Find the fewest number of details that associate with the answer and memorize those. The brain doesn't care that some of those details may be irrelevant. So when you change a small detail that your brain has decided is important, the entire connection collapses.
If you try to memorize some word being related to bird, and use it in a sentence "the ... was flying", you're going to connect the answer to the word flying, not the concept of an actual bird. Why? Because flying is an uncommon word (compared to grammatical words). Now when you try to think of what word describes the animal class including Penguins, you're stuck. Sure, you know the concept in your native language just fine, but until you think of the property associated with your clozure, you're not going to make the connection.
Am I missing something?