How can we take these researchers seriously if they're saying 1960s and not referencing Ebbinghaus?

They're dropping random references at the drop of a hat without any seriousness, where's their references from the 1960s?

I thought Ebbinghaus did this in the late 1800s?! 😜

Because Hermann Ebbinghaus' early studies on memory, retrieval, and spaced repetition focused on meaningless random letter combinations that ha no natural associations, he started a field of learning theories that separated the ideas of understanding and learning. Learning is creating connections between ideas we already know (contextualization).

http://www.diveintomark.link/2006/digg-users-are-dumber-than-goldfish

Users of some aggregation sites collectively forget prior articles and news and resubmit them at intervals. This may give rise to the colloquialism "goldfish effect".

This idea is a bit on the extreme side, but it does suggest that having a multi-card comparison view in a PKM system would be useful.

Drawing on Raymond Llull's combitorial memory system from the 12th century and a bit of Herman Ebbinghaus' spaced repetition (though this is also seen in earlier non-literate cultures), one could present two (or more) random atomic notes together as a way of juxtaposing disparate ideas from one's notes.

The spaced repetition of the cards would be helpful for one's long term memory of the ideas, but it could also have the secondary effect of nudging one to potentially find links or connections between the two ideas and help to spur creativity for the generation of new hybrid ideas or connection to other current ideas based on a person's changed context.

I've thought about this in the past (most likely while reading Frances Yates' Art of Memory), but don't think I've bothered to write it down (or it's hiding in untranscribed marginalia).

Not exactly a real scientific trial, but...

Note also that the other part was his having taken notes and actively engaged with the material as he heard it. The notes also formed the basis of his ability to do the spaced repetition.

Mnemonic methods could be used in place of the note taking for the properly trained. Visual memory just goes to expand on it.

This is an awfully fluff article that's probably too prescriptive. I wonder how many people it influences to try it out? How successful will they be without a more specific prescription?

This also shouldn't have been in question. There's a reasonably large body of practical experience of the effects of spaced repetition from indigenous cultures, not to mention psychology research from Hermann Ebbinghaus onwards.

How preliminary can they really be? The idea of spaced repetition goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans and Hermann Ebbinghaus did psychology research on the topic and was publishing in 1885. Surely they've got to have a better grasp than this indicates here.