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

by Benedict Carey

I was driven more by a fear of falling than by anything like curiosity or wonder.

Key argument

known. I’m not saying that I majored in gin and tonics; I never let go of my studies—just allowed them to become part of my life, rather than its central purpose. And somewhere in that tangle of good living and bad, I became a student.

Fantastisk citat til online kursus

For years afterward, I thought about college like I suspect many people do: I’d performed pretty well despite my scattered existence, my bad habits. I never stopped to ask whether those habits were, in fact, bad.

Distractions can aid learning. Napping does, too. Quitting before a project is done: not all bad, as an almost done project lingers in memory far longer than one that is completed. Taking a test on a subject before you know anything about it improves subsequent learning.

In short, it is not that there is a right way and wrong way to learn. It’s that there are different strategies, each uniquely suited to capturing a particular type of information. A good hunter tailors the trap to the prey.

But shooting for a goal so vague puts a person at risk of worshiping an ideal—and missing the target.

And it’s this instant access that creates what to me is the brain’s grandest illusion: that memories are “filed away” like video scenes that can be opened with a neural click, and snapped closed again. The truth is stranger—and far more useful.

As scientists put it, using our memories changes our memories.

memory. And photographic memories, as far as scientists can tell, don’t exist, at least not in the way that we imagine.

Til senere brug

nothing.” The study of forgetting has, in the past few decades, forced a fundamental reconsideration of how learning works. In a way, it has also altered what the words “remember” and “forget” mean. “The relationship between learning and forgetting is not so simple and in certain important respects is quite the opposite of what people assume,” Robert Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told

I think of this as the muscle-building property of forgetting: Some “breakdown” must occur for us to strengthen learning when we revisit the material. Without a little forgetting, you get no benefit from further study. It is what allows learning to build, like an exercised muscle.

The point is not that memory is nothing more than a pile of loose facts and a catalog of tall tales. It’s that retrieving any memory alters its accessibility, and often its content. There is an emerging theory that accounts for these and related ideas. It’s called the New Theory of Disuse, to distinguish it from an older, outdated principle stating, simply, that memories evaporate entirely from the brain over time if they’re not used. The new theory is far more than an updating, though. It’s an overhaul, recasting forgetting as the best friend of learning, rather than its rival.

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.

In 1914, the influential American education researcher 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.

Memory improved in the first few days without any further study, and only began to taper off after day four or so, on average.

seems to have caused mostly confusion. Few scientists appreciated what he’d done, and even today he is little more than a footnote in psychology, a far more obscure figure than Ebbinghaus. Still, Ballard knew what he had. “We not only tend to forget what we have once remembered,” he wrote, “but we also tend to remember what we have once forgotten.” Memory does not have just one tendency over time, toward decay. It has two. The other—“reminiscence,” Ballard called it—is a kind of growth, a bubbling up of facts or words that we don’t recall having learned in the first place. Both tendencies occur in the days after we’ve tried to memorize a poem or a list of words. What could

The American psychologist B. F. Skinner showed how rewards and punishments could alter behavior, and accelerate learning in many circumstances. Skinner tested various reward schedules against one another and got striking results: An automatic reward for a correct answer leads to little learning; occasional, periodic rewards are much more effective. Skinner’s work, which was enormously influential among educators, focused on improving teaching, rather than on the peculiarities of memory.

You can’t practice what you don’t remember.

Gc

Why does recall of pictures improve while recall of word lists does not?

The first principle theory is this: Any memory has two strengths, a storage strength and a retrieval strength. Storage strength is just that, a measure of how well learned something is. It builds up steadily with studying, and more sharply with use. The multiplication table is a good example. It’s drilled into our heads in grade school, and we use it continually throughout life, in a wide variety of situations, from balancing the bank account to calculating tips to helping our fourth grader with homework. Its storage strength is enormous.

According to the Bjorks’ theory, storage strength can increase but it never decreases.

The brain holds on to only what’s relevant, useful, or interesting—or may be so in the future. It does mean that everything we have deliberately committed to memory—the multiplication table, a childhood phone number, the combination to our first locker—is all there, and for good.

accessible. Its retrieval strength is low, or near zero. Retrieval strength, on the other hand, is a measure of how easily a nugget of information comes to mind. It, too, increases with studying, and with use. Without reinforcement, however, retrieval strength drops off quickly, and its capacity is relatively small (compared to storage).

Vigtig note

Compared to storage, retrieval strength is fickle. It can build quickly but also weaken quickly.

Retrieval is a matter of how quickly a person’s name comes to mind. Storage, by contrast, is a matter of how familiar the person is.

The harder we have to work to retrieve a memory, the greater the subsequent spike in retrieval and storage strength

“Compared to some kind of system in which out-of-date memories were to be overwritten or erased,” Bjork writes, “having such memories become inaccessible but remain in storage has important advantages. Because those memories are inaccessible, they don’t interfere with current information and procedures. But because they remain in memory they can—at least under certain circumstances—be relearned.”

Thus, forgetting is critical to the learning of new skills and to the preservation and reacquisition of old ones.

Yes, the Hesperus will eventually sink if the brain stops thinking about it, and its retrieval strength will inch toward zero. But a third test, and a fourth, would anchor the poem in memory more richly still, as the brain—now being called on to use the poem regularly—would continue its search for patterns within the poem, perhaps pulling up another half line or two with each exam. Will it all come back, with enough testing, even if only half was remembered the first time? Not likely. You get something back, not everything.

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.

Don’t forget your brain vitamins. In college, that’s what passed for exam-taking advice,

Yet we felt like we had a lucky charm, a way to put our head “in the same place” during test-taking as during studying. Essential it was, too, especially during finals week, with two and sometimes three tests falling on the same day. That kind of pressure drives people deep into their worst habits, whether chocolate and cigarettes, brain vitamins and nail-biting, cases of diet cola, or much stronger stuff. When hunkered down in this psychological survival mode, it can be a profound comfort to believe that a favorite “study aid” also improves exam performance. And so we did. “Brain chemistry,” our theory

of theorizing as pure rationalization, the undergraduate mind at its self-justifying finest. We had so many crackpot theories then, about dating and getting rich and studying, that I’d discarded the whole list. Still, millions of students have developed some version of the brain chemistry idea, and I think its enduring attraction is rooted in something deeper than wishful thinking. The theory fits in nicely with what we’ve been told about good study habits from Day 1—be consistent. Consistency has been a hallmark of education manuals since the 1900s, and the principle is built into our every assumption about good study habits. Develop a ritual, a daily schedule, a single place and time set aside for study and nothing else. Find a private corner of the house or the library, and a quiet niche of the day, early or late. These ideas go back at least to the Puritans and their ideal of study as devotion, but they have not changed a whit. “Choose an area that is quiet and free from distractions,” begins a study guide from Baylor University, though it could be from any institution. It continues: “Develop a study ritual to use each time you study.” “Use earplugs or a headset to block out noise.” “Say no to those who want to alter your study time.” Et cetera. It is all about consistency. And so is the “Study Aid” brain chemistry theory, if you think about it. Using the same “vitamin”—or, okay, mind-altering substance—to prepare and, later, to perform may not be particularly Puritan....

when in the same state of mind as when we studied—and, yes, that includes mild states of intoxication from alcohol or pot, as well as arousal from stimulants.

The psychologists, D. R. Godden and A. D. Baddeley, wanted to test a hypothesis that many learning theorists favored: that people remember more of what they studied when they return to that same study environment.

to what the Estonian psychologist Endel Tulving called “semantic memories.”

and the two psychologists concluded that, “recall is better if the environment of the original learning is reinstated.”

Du husker bedre hvad du lærer, hvis miljøet du lærer det I, et magen til miljøet du bliver testet i. Det kan bruges til Fjernstudie.

recall. In one investigation, for example, people who studied a list of nonsense syllables on blue-gray cards remembered 20 percent more of them on a later test when the test cards were also blue-gray (as opposed to, say, red).

The answer was no.

strategy. The first is that our assumptions about learning are suspect, if not wrong. Having something going on in the study environment, like music, is better than nothing (so much for sanctity of the quiet study room). The second point is that the experience of studying has more dimensions than we notice, some of which can have an impact on retention. The contextual cues scientists describe—music, light, background colors—are annoyingly ephemeral, it’s true. They’re subconscious, usually untraceable. Nonetheless, it is possible to recognize them at work in our own lives.

Når jeg skal lære noget (vigtigt) læg mærke til omgivelserne og brug dem som støtte til at huske det jeg lærer bedre. Eksempelvis det her stykke viden. Det lærte jeg i et tog på vej til Annecy, da jeg rejste med Helen.

Moods color everything we do, and when they’re extreme they can determine what we remember.

from all this work on external and internal cues is of a shifty-eyed dinner companion. It is tracking the main conversation (the homework assignment, the music notation, the hard facts) and occasionally becoming engaged in it. At the same time, it’s also periodically having a quick look around, taking in the room, sketching in sights and sounds and smells, as well as noting its internal reactions, its feelings and sensations. These features—the background music, a flickering candle, a pang of hunger—help our companion recall points made during the conversation later on, especially when the topic is a new one. Still, a strong hint is better. I think about this, again, in terms

Omgivelserne og de input du får hjælper med at huske hvor du lærte noget. Men, det betyder også at du skal have det samme musik, når du er til eksamen. Det er OK at lytte til musik til opgaver som du ikke skal forsvare (speciale booster)

too? It is. Yet the larger message of context research is that, in the end, it doesn’t much matter which aspects of the environment you vary, so long as you vary what you can. The philosopher John Locke once described the case of a man who had learned to dance by practicing according to a strict ritual, always in the same room, which contained an old trunk. Unfortunately, wrote Locke, “the idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, yet it was only when that trunk was there; he could not perform well in any other place unless that or some other trunk had its due position in the room.” 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 ...

Undgaa at have rutiner naar du studerer. Naar d aendrer miljoet husker du det bere foordi du forbinder det laert me hvor dublaerste/laeste det. Brug tid paa skabe et mentalt billede af hvor ddu bsidder og lavet lektier og skal til at lare indenn du begynder. Fjernstudie

The technique is called distributed learning or, more commonly, the spacing effect. People learn at least as much, and retain it much longer, when they distribute—or “space”—their study time than when they concentrate it. Mom’s right, it is better to do a little today and a little tomorrow rather than everything at once. Not just better, a lot better. Distributed learning, in certain situations, can double the amount we remember later on.

Fjernstudie - hvorfor det er en god ide

This isn’t to say that cramming is useless. The all-nighter is timetested, with a long track record of improving exam scores the next day. In terms of reliability, though, this nocturnal sprint is a little like overstuffing a cheap suitcase: the contents hold for a while, then everything falls out. Researchers who study learning say the result from habitual cramming can be dramatic from one semester to the next. The students who do it “arrive for the second term, and they don’t remember anything from the first term,” Henry Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told me. “It’s like they never took the class.”

Skriv blog indlaeg: Lad vaere med at cramme

The spacing effect is especially useful for memorizing new material. Try it yourself with two lists of, say, fifteen phone numbers or Russian vocabulary words. Study one list for ten minutes today and ten minutes tomorrow, and the other for twenty minutes tomorrow. Wait a week and test yourself to see how many of the total from both lists you can remember. Now go back to the two lists: The difference in what you recalled from each should be significant, and there’s no obvious explanation for it. I

Konkret metode til at huske bedre

“Four Bahrick Study,”

Teori til sproglaering

He continued to refine the ideal intervals for keeping his English sharp, and programmed a computer to track his progress. “These optimum intervals are calculated on the basis of two contradictory criteria,” he wrote at the time. “Intervals should be as long as possible to obtain the minimum frequency of repetitions, and to make the best use of the so-called spacing effect … Intervals should be short enough to ensure that the knowledge is still remembered.”

Spaced repeetition forklaret

intervals. To build and retain foreign vocabulary, scientific definitions, or other factual information, it’s best to review the material one or two days after initial study; then a week later; then about a month later. After that, the intervals are longer.

Hvordn laerer vi bedst sprog og opbygget et ordforraad