Learning: The Owner's Manual

The Ultimate Guide to Peak Mental Performance at All Ages

Pierce Howard

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780062357656
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

How We Learn

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.” —Joseph Addison

Acquiring and Remembering Information

Learning is memory; memory, learning. Learning entails two processes: acquiring and retaining. Psychologists and educators would call these processes short-term memory and long-term memory. Whether we are learning a telephone number, a chess strategy,

a role in a play, a dance step, or how to recover from a computer mishap, in order to say that we have learned something we must be able to demonstrate that not only have we acquired the knowledge or skill, i.e., that we understand it and can use it properly, but that we also have retained that understanding so that we may continue to use it over time. If we learn how to use something but forget soon afterward and must look it up (on the Internet, in a reference book, or from an associate), then we have only done half the job. To completely learn something, we must be able to use it repeatedly and independently. If I must continue to refresh a memory, I have only partially learned it.

A word of clarification is in order: To remember something is not the same thing as to memorize something. To memorize something is not the same thing as to learn something. Memory is used in two senses here. If I learn to play a Bach sonata, that means that I have mastered the notes and can play them for an audience. However, it does not mean that I have committed it to memory, or memorized it. Or I might learn to make a souffle without memorizing the ingredients. Or I might learn how to use a complex statistical formula without memorizing its elements. On the other hand, in all three cases, I might commit the elements to memory—the note, the ingredients, and the mathematical symbols, so that I am free of the texts that bear them. To memorize is a specific kind of learning goal that does not necessarily entail understanding. I could memorize a Latin quotation and speak it impressively at my next cocktail party without understanding a jot of it. So, the two meanings that we will necessarily modulate between are as follows: to remember how to use, do, or apply something, without regard to whether we need prompting as to the specifics, and to remember all of the details of something without needing any prompting as to the specifics. The first is like conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from a score, while the second is like conducting without the score. In both cases the conductor has learned the piece, but only in the second case have they memorized it. One can learn how to do something, and remember how to do it, without having memorized it.

Another key point to keep in mind with respect to how we use the word memory is that it comes in different modes: memory for words (e.g., a poem), for numbers (e.g., telephone numbers or the times tables), for images (e.g., faces or artworks), for sounds (e.g., specific engine noises or melodies), for movements (e.g., dance steps), for nomenclatures and organizational schemes (e.g., an organization chart or the periodic table of elements), for interpersonal idiosyncrasies (e.g., what motivates different people), and for personal preferences (e.g., things I do and don’t like). These eight areas are called talents, or multiple intelligences, and are discussed in more detail in chapter 29.

In this chapter we will focus initially on the mechanics of learning and memory. We will follow this by presenting researchers’ recommendations on how to learn most effectively. Because so many findings must be presented, I have sought an organization scheme to help make sense of them. I found such a scheme in the writings of one of the great thinkers of the Renaissance, Rotterdam’s Desiderius Erasmus, who wrote in 1512 (in Latin!), “The best memory is based on three important things: namely study, order, and care.” Memory expert Joan Minninger (1984) has renamed these three emphases as “rehearse, file and intend.” I could paraphrase the two of them as “allow time for practice, find a pattern to help you make the meaning personal, and make up your mind that you really want to remember it.” I would change the sequence, however, in order to emphasize the importance of making up your mind that you in fact want to remember something. That comes first—when you decide you strongly want to learn and remember something, it behooves you to find a pattern to facilitate memory and then to practice it repeatedly. Intend, file, and rehearse.

Here is an example from a common situation: You meet someone and really want to remember their name, for whatever reason (possible romantic connection, political ally, someone to recruit for a service project, and so forth). Thus, you intend or care to remember their name. Second, you say to yourself, “Her name is Amanda Campbell. What pattern about her suggests Amanda, or Campbell? Well, she has red hair, and the red could be associated with the famous Campbell’s soup can. She also has noticeable hair on her upper lip, making her look somewhat manly. So, A-MAN-da Campbell.” You then picture a can of Campbell’s soup with her face on it with a pronounced mustache. You make up your mind to say her name several more times that evening. Each time you say it silently, you picture the soup can. Eventually, when you see her, you see the soup can and the name comes to mind. Associating the name with the soup can and mustache is the file or order phase of the process, and repeating the name in association with the image is the rehearse or study phase.

After I present the mechanics of learning and memory, you will find the remainder of the chapter organized in these three groupings:

• Strategies for intending to, or wanting to, or caring about remembering

• Strategies for organizing, associating, or filing the new learning in some meaningful way

• Strategies for practicing, rehearsing, or studying what you have successfully put into short-term memory so that it will transfer into long-term memory

Note: In earlier editions of this book I included a section on so-called learning styles. However, a report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest in December of 2008 called into question the usefulness of learning styles. According to the “meshing” hypothesis, when students of a certain style are taught by a teacher employing that style, the student learns more than students who are taught by a teacher whose style does not mesh with or match the student’s. However, according to the authors (Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork, 2008), “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of student...

Table of contents

• Contents
• A Note to the Reader
• How We Learn: Acquiring and Remembering Information
• The Mechanics of Memory
• The Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher