My favorite "desirable difficulty" from cog psych is to practice recall. I recall a study with 3 groups of students:
1. read essay 4 times
2. read and take notes, study notes
3. read once, then have to write out (a few times) what can be recalled on a blank piece of paper
The groups were from most to least confident in their learning but the actual success on a test for concepts (which requires recall) was opposite.
So, better than using a weird font to push encoding of memory is to plan for and then do recall practice. Like tell other people about what you learned or test yourself on it.
You get good at whatever you practice. If you reread something over and over, you don't get better at recalling the ideas, but you do get better at reading the thing. I bet the first group above would do better than the others at giving a live reading of the essay.
The Feynman Technique is basically alternating between writing a description of a concept on paper from memory, and looking up whatever you couldn't remember.
It's not my method, I was recalling something I learned elsewhere. I've told lots of people about it, so I recall the points that mattered for telling people. I haven't practiced recalling the study authors and name of the study, so I can't recall that stuff.
1. read essay 4 times
2. read and take notes, study notes
3. read once, then have to write out (a few times) what can be recalled on a blank piece of paper
The groups were from most to least confident in their learning but the actual success on a test for concepts (which requires recall) was opposite.
So, better than using a weird font to push encoding of memory is to plan for and then do recall practice. Like tell other people about what you learned or test yourself on it.
You get good at whatever you practice. If you reread something over and over, you don't get better at recalling the ideas, but you do get better at reading the thing. I bet the first group above would do better than the others at giving a live reading of the essay.