Dual Coding: How to Revise With Diagrams, Timelines and Visuals
Most revision advice tells you to write things down. Fewer people tell you how to lay information out so your brain can actually hold on to it. That is where dual coding comes in. Dual coding means pairing words with visuals — a diagram, a flowchart, a timeline, a labelled sketch — so the same idea is stored in two forms rather than one. It is one of the better-supported ideas in cognitive psychology, and it is badly misunderstood by most students, who assume it means "make your notes pretty". It does not. Here is what it actually involves, and how to use it for GCSE and A-Level revision without wasting hours on colouring in. What dual coding actually is The underlying idea, developed by the psychologist Allan Paivio, is that we process verbal information and visual information through partly separate channels. When a concept is encoded both ways, you end up with two routes back to it in an exam — if the wording escapes you, the shape of the diagram might not. The cr...