How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where and Why It Happens

by Benedict Carey

If recollecting is just that—a re-collection of perceptions, facts, and ideas scattered in intertwining neural networks in the dark storm of the brain—then forgetting acts to block the background noise, the static, so that the right signals stand out. The sharpness of the one depends on the strength of the other.

A better name for it, then, might be the Forget to Learn theory. That phrase captures its literal implications and its general spirit, its reassuring voice. One implication, for instance, is that forgetting a huge chunk of what we’ve just learned, especially when it’s a brand-new topic, is not necessarily evidence of laziness, attention deficits, or a faulty character. On the contrary, it is a sign that the brain is working as it should. No one

He varied the duration of his practice sessions, too, and found (surprise) that more practice sessions generally resulted in higher test scores and a slower rate of forgetting.

Edward Thorndike turned Ebbinghaus’s curve into a “law” of learning. He called it the Law of Disuse, which asserted that learned information, without continued use, decays from memory entirely—i.e., use it or lose it.

That’s not all. The harder we have to work to retrieve a memory, the greater the subsequent spike in retrieval and storage strength (learning). The Bjorks call this principle desirable difficult and its importance will become apparent in the coming pages.

Using memory changes memory—and for the better. Forgetting enables and deepens learning, by filtering out distracting information and by allowing some breakdown that, after reuse, drives retrieval and storage strength higher than they were originally. Those are the basic principles that emerge from brain biology and cognitive science,

This research says, take the trunk out of the room. Since we cannot predict the context in which we’ll have to perform, we’re better off varying the circumstances in which we prepare. We need to handle life’s pop quizzes, its spontaneous pickup games and jam sessions, and the traditional advice to establish a strict practice routine is no way to do so. On the contrary: Try another room altogether. Another time of day. Take the guitar outside, into the park, into the woods. Change cafés. Switch practice courts. Put on blues instead of classical. Each alteration of the routine further enriches the skills being rehearsed, making them sharper and more accessible for a longer period of time. This kind of experimenting itself reinforces learning, and makes what you know increasingly independent of your surroundings.

They also emphasized that people don’t benefit from an incubation break unless they have reached an impasse. Their definition of “impasse” is not precise, but most of us know the difference between a speed bump and a brick wall.

So the question is: How, then, do we most effectively activate that goal?

By interrupting work on it at an important and difficult moment—propelling the assignment, via the Zeigarnik effect, to the top of our mind.

What does this mean for a learning strategy? It suggests that we should start work on large projects as soon as possible and stop when we get stuck, with the confidence that we are initiating percolation, not quitting.

I see percolation as a means of using procrastination in my favor. When I’m engrossed in a complex assignment, I try to do a little each day, and if I get some momentum in one session, I ride it for a while—and then stop, in the middle of some section, when I’m stalled. I return and complete it the next workday.

This much is clear: The mixing of items, skills, or concepts during practice, over the longer term, seems to help us not only see the distinctions between them but also to achieve a clearer grasp of each one individually. The hardest part is abandoning our primal faith in repetition.

Scientists have a lot more work to do before they figure out how, and for which subjects, PLMs are most effective. You can play computer games all you want, but you still have to fly the plane or operate on a living human being. It’s a supplement to experience, not a substitute. That’s one reason perceptual learning remains a backwater in psychology and education. It’s hardly a reason to ignore it, though. Perceptual learning is happening all the time, after all, and automatically—and it’s now clear that it can be exploited to speed up acquisition of specific skills.

Put it this way: I no longer think of naps or knocking off early as evidence of laziness, or a waste of time, or, worst of all, a failure of will.

Sleep is learning

think of sleep as learning with my eyes closed.