Sources and about

What this app is

Sharpen Me is a personal learning app built for Carol. All 30 lessons, exercises, quiz questions, scenarios and examples were written originally for this app. Examples involving Adaptify AI and WGH Solutions are illustrative practice situations, not real client cases, and the people in scenarios and memory games are fictional.

What it is not

• It is not live coaching. The practice tools assemble your own words using fixed templates. Nothing is generated by AI and nothing evaluates your answers automatically.
• Scenario prompts are prepared in advance and do not respond to what you write.
• Memory exercise scores describe performance on that exercise only. They do not measure intelligence or general memory.
• It makes no health, medical or psychological promises.
• Progress is saved on this device only, with no cloud sync.

Learning takes practice

Reading a lesson is a start. Skills such as clear speaking, structured thinking and consistent content come from repeated practice in real situations, ideally with honest feedback from people you trust. The real-world action in each lesson is there for that reason.

References

These published works informed the memory and focus lessons. They describe research findings in specific study conditions. Listing them does not mean this app has been tested or that it will produce the same effects for you. Communication and content lessons draw on widely used professional practice rather than a specific study, so no citations are claimed for them.

• Roediger, H. L., and Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3).

  doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

  Informs: Retrieval practice lesson and the flashcards' recall-before-reveal design.

• Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3).

  doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

  Informs: Spaced review lesson and the idea of growing review intervals.

• Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., and Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1).

  doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266

  Informs: General background on which study techniques have stronger evidence.

• Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2).

  doi.org/10.1037/h0043158

  Informs: Historical background for the chunking lesson.