‘Binge – racing’, a term coined by Netflix. Referring to the action of watching a new season before 24 hours of its release. According to J. Benjamin Hutchinson who is an assistant professor at the College of Science at Northeastern University, binge-watchers are able to remember shows better for a long time.
He himself has binge-watched shows like ‘Stranger things’ and ‘House of Cards’. He says that, though memory is related with binge watching shows, it also becomes impaired if you watch the entire show at one time. It is better to space out time between episodes so that you remember them better. The best explanation provided to this is the consolidation and retrieving or remembering the scenes or events from the past episodes. Remembering what happened in the last episode makes you think about it and ponder upon different contexts and opinions On the other hand, watching all the episodes on the first go creates a generalised context, leaving no variations in interpretation.
The same methodology actually works while studying. Many students, generally engage themselves in learning a chunk of notes on the day before the exam. This becomes difficult as there is very less time spent on thinking and processing on what they have read and learnt. Due to this, out of all the content read, very less amount is retrieved and remembered. And hence, professors emphasise on starting studies at least three to four weeks before the exam. The results gained in this process is a good performance. Even in case of watching shows, Hutchinson advices of watching them with breaks. It leaves you with time to think on what happened in the previous episode.
Binge-watching may leave you exposed to an ample of information quickly. But if learning, remembering or retrieving and consolidating is important for you, you need to space your content out with considerable time in between.
Akshara Palshetkar