Quick thought on SRS intervals

[Guest realmayo]

I spent more than two weeks without opening up my SRS programme Anki, far longer than I've every played truant before and it's now given me 3000 cards to work through, which I'll do over the next few days. Far from ideal, of course, but 活该。

I'm starting with cards that have the shortest interval. Quite a few of these are troublesome cards: ones I've got wrong several times before, or confused with other cards. This makes sense of course: all these cards that I'm seeing now are ones which I had got wrong (and then got right at least once) in the week or so before I stopped using Anki -- hence their now-short interval.

The reason for this topic is that I'm finding it really easy to remember them! Almost all of them! It seems like it's much easier to get these annoying, tricky cards right after not seeing them for 16 days, than it was after only a day or two. Bear in mind I'm referring to cards which had an interval of between 1 and (so far) 5 days ... but obviously in real life that interval was extended because of my "sabbatical".

The only reason I can guess for this is that certain cards become problematic as "cards": after 2 or 3 mistakes one thinks of them as difficult cards that need remembering rather than as Chinese characters or words. But by not seeing them for a while, I've "broken" this notion, and am seeing them as Chinese again.

Does this make sense? Anyone had the same experience? I'm wondering if I should in future, if I find myself seeing a certain card as more a "test" or "card" instead of a word, simply suspend it for a week....

[renzhe]

Human memory is odd, and often a short break improves it. The thing about increasing intervals is just a guideline, which works most of the time.