Does anyone else usually have these instances where they are reviewing their cards, and you have trouble remembering something, and then RIGHT as you flip the card over, you instantly recall whatever it was?
This happens to me all the time, probably every day.
Now sometimes I wonder if it all just happened really fast, and I'm cheating myself. Like, maybe I flipped the card, my eyes saw the answer, managed to pick out the relevant part and read/decipher it, all in a split second that seems simultaneous with flipping the card. But maybe I'm just overthinking it.
There's just something about flipping the card that tends to jog my memory! I sometimes wonder, "what if I didn't flip the card? What if I went to press the button, but stopped short? Could I fool myself into remembering the answer?" Perhaps an anki plugin that would randomly not reveal the answer when you tell it to. If I think I'm showing the answer but it doesn't happen, would I still remember?
So fascinating :p

lol

This has happened to me a few times... I usually stare at the screen for a full minute trying to figure out if I cheated or not. I usually just fail it...

Maybe we've trained our brains to suddenly recall information at the sound of a spacebar click.

Yeah I get this too. I'll strain my brain, give up, and as I hit the flip I remember it. I sometimes pass, sometimes fail it. I'll do it with parts of a card to like answer a くinstead of a ぐ　for 風邪薬 - "かぜくすり　(as I flip) no かぜぐすり", or write part of a kanji wrong, and know it and know the right one juuuuust as I flip it. Those I usually just pass with a 2.

It happens all the time! It's like the circuit in my brains is almost complete, but there is just this tiny section that is barely not connected. It's like a dying fluorescent.

You could try making the text on the answer side white so that when you flip the card you have to highlight the answer to check it. I do this to minimize exposure to English while reviewing but I could see it working well in this situation too.

masaman Wrote:It happens all the time! It's like the circuit in my brains is almost complete, but there is just this tiny section that is barely not connected. It's like a dying fluorescent.

A dying fluorescent... man, that's a good way to describe my brain on a bad day.

But yup, OP, this happens to me all the damn time, especially during my first 5 minutes of reviewing when I'm just warming up. I usually give myself one card a day to bury (literally using Anki's "bury" function), which is nearly always one of the first dozen or so, and always one that I've just oh-so-barely failed thanks to that flickering bulb in my head... and often involving that bizarre phenomenon of remembering the sucker RIGHT as I flip it over.

I admit that I sometimes mark those "failed" cards as hard, though. Chances are, the next time I encounter it, I won't make the same mistake anyway. Being fairly liberal with grading those just-barely-failed cards has never hurt me.

I have noticed this occur a lot less frequently lately, though. Maybe I'm finally beginning to adapt to this crazy language!