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Forgetting is predictable. So is remembering.
Most apps that promise to help you learn instead help you cram. AuxCortex does the opposite: it spreads small, deliberate reviews across days, weeks, and months — the timing schedule under which the brain consolidates information into something it will keep. You bring the material; the schedule brings the durability.
It works for vocabulary, definitions, names, dates, phone numbers, anatomy, recipes, and anything you can put in question/answer form.
Prompt, recall, assess
You create the memories. A short question, a short answer. The act of creating it helps you remember. Each item lives independently and is scheduled independently.
AuxCortex schedules the reviews. Trained by your self-assessment, the app learns to predict the optimal interval for you, for each memory.
You show up a few minutes a day. A short queue of items that are about to slip out of memory. Tap to reveal the answer, drag to assess how much you remembered.
What a century of memory research keeps finding.
Hermann Ebbinghaus measured his own forgetting in 1885 and produced the first quantitative law of memory loss. In the 140 years since, the experiment has been repeated across languages, populations, and disciplines, and the result has held up: memory decays predictably, and a well-timed reminder restores it nearly to full strength.
The forgetting curve. Without rehearsal, about half of newly learned material is gone within a day, and most of the rest within a week.1
The spacing effect. A given amount of review time is far more effective when distributed across days than when concentrated in one sitting.2
Expanding retrieval. Each successful recall makes the next one more durable. Intervals can roughly double after each success without loss of retention.3
Effortful recall. The act of pulling an answer out of memory — not just rereading it — is what strengthens the trace.4
Interleaving. Mixing related topics within a study session produces more durable learning than working one topic to mastery before moving to the next.5
Honest self-assessment. Judging accurately what you do and don't know is itself a learnable skill. As it improves, your learning beomes more efficient.6
- Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve
- Spaced repetition improves learning
- Memory is reinforced via testing
- Effortful recall improves learning
- Interleaving study subjects improves learning
- Self-assessment improves learning
For a popular overview of the science of learning, we recommend Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel.