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

by Benedict Carey

One way to think of storage and retrieval is to picture a huge party in which everyone you ever met is in attendance (at the age when you last saw them).

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, and they underlie—and will help us understand—the various learning techniques yet to come.

SuperMemo teaches according to Wozniak’s calculations.

“Achievement tests or examinations are learning devices and should not be considered only as tools for measuring achievement of pupils.” For lab researchers focused on improving retention,

This idea of fixedness infects our perceptions of many problems we encounter. We spend five minutes rifling through drawers searching for a pair of scissors to open a package when the keys in our pocket could do the job just as well.

Chance feeds the tuned mind.

Percolation is a matter of vigilance, of finding ways to tune the mind so that it collects a mix of external perceptions and internal thoughts that are relevant to the project at hand.

Interleaving. That’s a cognitive science word, and it simply means mixing related but distinct material during study.

The evidence so far suggests that interleaving is likely applicable not just to math, but to almost any topic or skill. Badminton. History (mix concepts from related periods).

Remember: Interleaving is not just about review but also discriminating between types of problems, moves, or concepts.

Mixed-up practice doesn’t just build overall dexterity and prompt active discrimination. It helps prepare us for life’s curveballs, literal and figurative.

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.

A lot, it turns out. Take “concentration,” for example, that most basic educational necessity, that mental flow we’re told is so precious to learning. What is concentration, exactly? We all have an idea of what it means. We know it when we see it, and we’d like more of it. Yet it’s an ideal, a mirage, a word that blurs the reality of what the brain actually does while learning.

Competitive advantage of more easily escaping into states of flow -- deepens learning and comprehensive.