Illusions of competence

Learning protip

Recall

Recall

One of the most common approaches for trying to learn material from a book or from notes is simply to reread it. But psychologist, Jeffrey Karpicke, has shown that this approach is actually much less productive than another, very simple, technique. Recall. After you've read the material, simply look away, and see what you can recall from the material you've just read.

This gives an important reminder. When we retrieve knowledge, we're not just being mindless robots. The retrieval process itself enhances deep learning, and helps us to begin forming chunks. It's almost as if the recall process helps build in little neural hooks, that we can hang our thinking on.

Students themselves predicted that simply reading and recalling the materials, wasn't the best way to learn. They thought, concept mapping, drawing diagrams that show the relationship between the concepts would be the best. But if you're trying to build connections between chunks, before the basic chunks are embedded in the brain, it doesn't work as well.

Using recall, mental retrieval of the key ideas, rather than passive rereading, will make your study time more focused and effective. The only time rereading text seems to be effective, is if you let time pass between the rereading, so that it becomes more of an exercise in spaced repetition.

Solving problems yourself instead of looking at the solution

Now, you understand, why it is key that you are the one doing the problem solving or mastering the concept. Not whoever wrote the solution manual, or book, on whatever subject you're studying. If you just look at the solution, for example, then tell yourself. Oh yeah, I see why they did that. Then the solution is not really yours. You've done almost nothing to knit those concepts into your own underlying neural circuitry. Merely glancing at a solution and thinking you truly know it yourself is one of the most common illusions of competence in learning. You must have the information persisting in your memory if you're to master the material well enough to do well on tests and to think creatively with it.

Learning Protip: Highlighting and underlining notes

1 In a related thing, you may be surprised to learn that highlighting and underlining must be done very carefully. Otherwise it can not only be ineffective, but also misleading. It's as if, making lots of motions with your hand can fool you into thinking you've placed the concept in your brain. If you do mark up the text, try to look for main ideas before making any marks. And try to keep your underlining or highlighting to a minimum. One sentence or less per paragraph. On the other hand, words or notes in a margin that synthesize key concepts are a very good idea.

2. Recalling material when you are outside your usual place of study can also help you strengthen your grasp of the material. You don't realize it, but when you are learning something new you can often take in subliminal cues for the room and the space around you at the time you were originally learning the material

By recalling and thinking about the material when you are in various physical environment, you become independent of the cues from any one given location. That helps you avoid the problem of the test room being different from where you originally learned the material.

This is a reminder that just wanting to learn the material, and spending a lot of time with it, doesn't guarantee you'll actually learn it. A super helpful way to make sure you're learning and not fooling yourself with illusions of competence, is to test yourself on whatever you're learning.