[Vocabulary] Students find themselves unable to recall facts that they “knew cold” before they...

[wotcha22]

[FONT=&quot]" [/FONT]We remember better when cues present during learning are present during recall. It follows that we can improve performance by identifying cues that will be present during recall and then learning in the presence of those cues. Students typically do exactly the opposite: They study in their room, often while lying in a bed and eating some sort of snack. Or, if the weather is pleasant, they sit under a large tree or on a park bench. Often friends stop by and chat, and studying gets mixed up with socializing, When they take a test on what they have studied, they are typically in a classroom, seated in a rather uncomfortable chair, typically in the presence of a number of other students with whom they cannot converse. These differences in context no doubt account for some forgetting. Students find themselves unable to recall facts that they “knew cold” before they walked into the classroom. "

The above is from a high school text book, and I wonder the exact meaning on the underlined sentence
-especially "knew cold"

 

[tzfujimino]

Hello, wotcha.:-D

The 'cold' in your sentence seems to be an adverb: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/COLD?r=66
I think it's mainly used in AmE.
I've found this: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=598490

 

[Barb_D]

The whole sentence means "Students know things completely and thoroughly, but once they are in the classroom (without the context or "cues" they had while learning the information), they can't remember those things.