Why are mind maps recommended for study and recap? In both my last year of high school and my freshmen year at the university, I got strong recommendations to study using mind maps - especially because this is apparently better to cope with large amounts of new information.


Is mind mapping effective in learning and reflecting on information?
If so, how does mind mapping help in learning and reflecting on information?
An excellent question! A 2011 paper in Science by Karpicke and Blunt in the Cognition and Learning Lab at Purdue University gets at this issue. They offer that:


  "Concept mapping is considered an active learning task, and it serves
  as an elaborative study activity when students construct concept maps
  in the presence of the materials they are learning. Under these
  conditions, concept mapping bears the defining characteristics of an
  elaborative study method: It requires students to enrich the material
  they are studying and encode meaningful relationships among concepts
  within an organized knowledge structure."


They go on in their paper, however, to demonstrate that concept mapping is far less efficient than an even simpler technique: repeated retrieval (e.g., self-testing). Practicing retrieval, they argue, "enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes."

Reference:

Karpicke, J.D., &amp; Blunt, J.R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331, 772-775.