Key Points
- “illusions of fluency” renders students poor judges of their abilities
- “active recall” is critical
- “spaced learning” is better than inputting information in a single sitting
- learning occurs all the time, so forgetting is important, and sleep is an important part of forgetting
- memory comprises two components to memory: storage (how well understood); and, retrieval (ease of recall)
Description Of Book
Several books on the psychology of learning tend to refer to the same studies and interpret them in similar ways. For instance, I read How We Learn at approximately the same time as Making It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown et al:
Most of the books I have read agree on several fundamental points about the type of learning that goes on at universities and beyond.
Now it is difficult for me to recall the differences between them, and the key ideas become intermingled in my {flawed} memory. However, I enjoyed both, and recall How’ is more biased towards study details than ‘Stick. ‘Stick has a useful final chapter, looking at learning from perspectives of students, teachers, corporate trainers etc, which draws conclusions from illustrative studies. How’ has a much more concise FAQ-style appendix, and that is a concise summary.
(i) The Illusion Of Fluency. Most people tend to learn by intuitive strategies to make maximum progress in minimal time. Unfortunately, raw intuition about superior learning strategies is misleading because of the illusion of fluency. A student might repeatedly read a text or a series of notes until they seem so familiar that even a brief glance stimulates enough memories to create a “job done, input and understood” impression. However, the brain is recalling the appearance of the input more than its contents and meaning; this creates unhelpful overconfidence. Basically, we cannot know what we don’t know, and do not know that we don’t, if you see what I mean.
Illusions of fluency account for why many students think they will do well on an exam, but fail dramatically. Strategies like re-reading many times, highlighting, and reading out loud can strengthen this illusion that the material is leaned and understood, more than they do real memorization and comprehension.
(ii) Active Recall Is Fundamentally Important. This is making a conscious effort to recall something that is not naturally arising in the mind. For instance, it may be easy to recall a date last weekend, in fact that can spontaneously, but you have to try to think about hum-drum parts of a long, boring, lecture. Active recall can be used to test the extent of memorization and comprehension, and the act of doing so strengthens both. Like Google, the brain prioritizes information accessed frequently. Active recall can happen anywhere at any time. However, the impact of time intervals between active recall is important which is why active recall and spaced learning are related.
a consensus in psychology is that active recall is front-and-center to good learning practices
(iii) Spaced (Or “Distributed”) Learning. Intervals between recollections characterized spaced learning. At one extreme, rapid recollections blur into the original input. For instance, someone may immediately twice-repeat something they heard in the morning, but it may not be enough for recollection the next day; that form of repetition might only help immediately after. However, if instead that person successfully recollected once before dinner and again in the morning it is probably going to be easier later that day.
spaced learning is more effective than trying to learn everything at once, “one and done”
(v) Sleep Is Critical To Conscious Memory. Sleep is widely recognized as a period wherein useful memories are consolidated. Going without sleep generally is bad, and it does not aid the memory.
“Pulling an all-nighter” to cram for an exam the following day can be beneficial but involves loss of sleep. These apparently opposing characteristics are reconcilable because cramming overnight can improve exam performance the next day if the extent of learning gained outweighs loss of sharpness caused by sleeplessness. However, in the long term, knowledge crammed in once and over a short period is forgotten quickly.
(v) Memory Is The Net Effect of Storage and Retrieval. Carey describes how memory is made up of two components, the first being storage, meaning how well somethings is learned. An input not properly understood or somehow internalized will not be particularly memorable relative to the plentiful stimuli the brain deals with constantly. Conversely, there could be events that left a deep impression, if only once and briefly, that are not easily forgotten; they are securely stored. Retrieval is different to storage. For instance, right now I clearly remember the name of a teacher who taught me history decades ago, it is securely stored. However, on a different day, it might take a long time to recall that name because it is one I hardly ever (about once every decade, I guess) think about; that is a retrieval problem.
My Interpretation
Strategic Overview. It easier for me to understand if I can rationalize an explanation on a deeper level. I did that for this book by visualizing a struggle between the consciousness and the brain.
The Illusion Of Fluency, when viewed in the context of the consciousness, can be defined simply.
illusions of fluency occur when the brain learns appearance of an input and the conscious mind misinterprets that as memorization of the input’s contents and its deeper meaning
This view explains the truth of maxims like, “In theory it is known in practice, but in practice it is n’t.” Staring at notes for extended period makes them familiar, but that is not the same as understanding, retaining, and applying what they say. The consciousness can be deluded into believing it has equipped the brain to perform tasks it has not adequately been trained to do.
Active Recall also becomes clear in terms of a struggle between consciousness and the brain. Consciousness needs information it understands and can make use of, because that is the nature of the mind. Collections of facts or concepts that are not synergistically related and cannot be assimilated to formulate an actionable conclusion are useless to the consciousness; it may be aware of them for a short while, then is ignores them. The brain is a tool for the conscious mind to store and retrieve what it needs.
recall is how the consciousness trains the brain to store and retrieve thoughts it does not instinctively need
I mean this statement to be as bold as it sounds. Recall is not a way for the consciousness to program the brain, it is the way. It is how the consciousness wires the brain with thoughts aimed at tasks above and beyond Flight, Fight, Food, and Fexual-reproduction.
Recall can be harmful or productive. For instance:
(i) My ex-girlfriend left me cold.
(ii) “Chastity” is the name of that girl who smiles at me in chemistry lectures.
Nothing good is likely to arise from recollection (i); to keep recycling it will probably lead to regret, depression, and bitterness. However, (ii) is could be useful when getting to know Chastity so it is worth thinking of that name at intervals until it is not easily forgotten, or not required anymore.
The consciousness must deliberately revisit inputs to train the brain; consequently it tests the brain repeatedly but this only happens frequently for “non-academic” experiences. Effort required to initiate recall is inversely proportional to the degree of removal from the instinctive. For instance, it may be easy to remember Chastity’s name because it is related to an instinctive desire for Fexual-reproduction, but harder to remember Ohm’s law. However, if Ohm’s Law is described using the mnemonic “Virgins Are Rare (Volts = Amps x Resistance)”, it somehow seems easier (for the same reason). On the other hand, to force the brain to remember the structure of an ester group satisfies no instinctual desire or potential hazard, so to do this requires active recall. Recollections happen spontaneously, but memories that do not satisfy emotions usually have to be reclaimed via active recall, and this takes effort.
Active recall can be forced on students, as in exams, or they can force themselves to do it. Students who only use active recall only in formal exams with not learn as effectively as ones who self-generate opportunities to test themselves, and this will illustrate what they don’t know.
Spaced Learning requires intervals between those recollections, but why? Time is required for the brain to identify inputs that the consciousness has flagged as “worth retaining for extended periods” by recalling them. In other words, like AI, real intelligence needs a training set. Instinctive reflexes of the brain are programed by inputs that repeatedly influence survival, while intellect is built on top of that by what the conscious demonstrates it would most like to have. Brain power in humans exceeds what is required for survival, and anything that is left can be used for non-essential purposes, is just like fun-money: a finite resource, so spending it must be prioritized.
Forgetting is part of prioritization. The brain is continuously overwhelmed with sensory inputs it does not need to promote to the consciousness. Letting go of unnecessary inputs improves signal-to-noise ratios for the rest, so forgetting is critical to actionable consciousness. It seems stupid to claim forgetting is an important part of intellect, but it is. Information useless to the intellect diminishes clear thinking. Sleep helps “take out the mental garbage” and techniques to promote mindfulness lower the frequency of distractions by emotions like greed, envy, and regret. Most of us think we know a lot about sleep, but Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep (affiliate link below) helped me understand a lot more.
A LOT. This book made me rethink how I approach sleep, probably making me more productive.
Revisiting inputs, as in spaced learning, would be useless if all memories were forgotten at the same rate, but they are not. Random, unrelated thoughts decay rapidly, but ones which synergistically combine to trigger others fade relatively slowly. Consequently, continually (not continuously) refreshing synergistic thoughts makes them more conspicuous relative to the constant, but near random, static noise the brain deals with. Random noise cancels itself after repeated pulsing and observation, simply because it is randomly there or not, whereas persistent recollections are observed frequently hence reinforce. Memories can be refreshed at intervals, and times between recollections are for forgetting noise, and especially for the next day and after because of sleep.
spaced learning, sleep and mindfulness allow the brain to identify what the conscious tells it is important
In other words, the brain is not as smart as it might be. Testing at intervals is a way for the conscious to wire the brain for skills beyond those that are instinctively required (eg Flight, Fight, Food, and …..). The most effective route to long term memory is through pulsed recollections where the forgetting interval does not allow forgetting the core memory. Ideal intervals tend to be relatively short at first, and increase as a long term memory gets more established. Waiting until a memory is almost forgotten requires strenuous active recall, but much more effective and less risky than methods which reinforce illusions of fluency. Spaced active recall at appropriate intervals are the most time-efficient ways to form intellectual memories.
Conclusions
The psychology of learning may be transforming its emphasis into what I am going to call hard brain science driven by unambiguous responses that can be seen and, in some cases, quantified, eg from MRI scans. Brain science is more reliable if stimuli that cause quantifiable responses can be differentiated from noise environmental noise and emotional impulses which continually flash through our brains like severe electric storms. In any instant the brain processes convoluted mixes of the past, present, and future, prioritized in emotionally driven and illogical ways to the intellect, and it does this because its main task is survival. In hard brain research it is therefore difficult to identify exactly which input, or combinations of them, cause responses.
Perhaps we are now transitioning out of an era of comparatively soft brain science. By that I mean studying the brain by looking at causes and effects on parameters like memory and learning, without attention, or even access, to granular levels of detail. Compared with the hard kind, soft brain science is old-fashioned and less cutting-edge but there are more numerous impactful conclusions to compare and reconsider. In My Not-so-humble Opinion (IMNO; not many blog writers are humble about their opinions, and it would be disingenuous to claim otherwise), How’ is a timely, comprehensive overview for non-psychologists. It is valuable provided we remember the conclusions are as as firm as the science they are based on, ie soft.
My interpretation of How We Learn how conscious and the brain are related was inspired by The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happiness by Steve Peters et al (affiliate link below). That book describes how conscious development of the intellect requires mastery over thoughts that arise in the survival-orientated region of the brain that is faster and more powerful. It may explain Peter’s role in coaching the UK Olympic Team for London 2012, in which they far excelled most UK teams before that; he showed athletes how to train their minds to coerce their bodies to do extremely taxing things.