I was talking to a friend today and we came up with a couple ideas for making reviews/new cards go more smoothly in Anki. Let me know what you think. I'm a programmer, so I would be willing make these into plugins/stand-alone programs if anyone thinks it is a good idea. (I'm also interested on any research on the topic--let me know.)

1) I mostly use AnkiDroid when doing reviews. Sometimes I will open a deck, glance at the question of the first card when it comes up, and then remember I have something to do and close the deck. Occasionally this first card I see will be difficult. I don't know it off the top of my head. But I immediately close the deck so I don't even think about it.

Later, when I come to actually do my reviews, I will almost always get that card correct (almost immediately). It's almost like I was loading that card into my mental cache when I saw it for the first time.

This gave me the idea for an anki plugin. You would use it before you do your reviews for the day. It would just take all of your review cards for the day and flash them on the screen one at a time real fast. I have no idea what an appropriate amount of time would be, but for instance it could flash each card for half a second.

This would only take 1 minute to do for 120 cards. My hypothesis is that it would load all of these cards into your mental cache, and make your reviews take much less time (well, as long as you trim your review time down by more than a minute, then it would be a time saver).

What do you think about this? Cool? Dumb? Has anyone ever read any research that either supports or negates this idea?

2) After explaining this idea to one of my friends, he came up with another cool idea--using subliminal messaging to help with reviews/new cards. The idea is that you have a subliminal messaging program running on your computer at all times flashing cards you want to learn (or maybe even your reviews for the day).

For instance, everyday you learn 10 new cards. You set this program to pop up once a minute--too fast for you to realize, but slow enough for your subconscious to see. The program will randomly flash one of these 10 cards you want to learn for the day. As long as subliminal learning actually works, then when you go to actually learn it in Anki, it will be a lot easier to memorize because you've been seeing it all day.

Alternatively, it could flash your reviews for the day. I'd be more hesitant about this because it might mess up Anki's algorithm.


So, let me know what you think. Would you be willing to try a program like this? Do you know of any scientific evidence either supporting or denying these ideas? The only thing I found on a quick google search is this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_...#Academics

I'm surprised that there are no comments so far. What you describe in 1) is close to my own experiences. Sometimes I take advantage of this "delayed recall" and answer the card on a second attempt and only then mark it but I don't/can't do that in a systematic way. The other idea you describe kind of makes sense but I wouldn't think you will find serious research to back it up. As an experiment it would be quite exciting IMO.

I always thought a anki flash card slideshow screensaver would be nice to have when you watching tv or doing homework so you could glance at words+definitions as they pass by

Tolerence91 Wrote:I always thought a anki flash card slideshow screensaver would be nice to have when you watching tv or doing homework so you could glance at words+definitions as they pass by

It's nice to have everything but would it really work for you?
Because I know that I wouldn't watch those word screensavers but I know that I would read slide words if it was a lecture video or I know that I would read japanese subtitles of an interesting movie

[s0apgun]

I feel like it works against the whole point of SRS. They're there for you to put the least amount of effort or time spent into reviewing the cards. Its unnecessary to see it again outside the SRS and also disturbs the scheduling. If you know the card you know it, if not you fail it. Maybe time boxing would be of help instead of subliminal methods, I find spending less time thinking about a card is just as effective as normal.

s0apgun Wrote:I feel like it works against the whole point of SRS.

Once I thought along those lines as well but if you think about it more you will realise that any contact with L2 material screws SRS. Like reading, for example, disturbs scheduling of those newly remembered kanji. You basically have to choose - either you do reviews for the sake of proving that SRS works (and don't read, write, speak, listen), or you use the remembered facts to acquire your second language (and use SRS as means to make sure that those rarely used pieces of knowladge won't leave your brain).