1.- FORGET WHAT
YOU KNOW ABOUT GOOD STUDY HABITS
Forget what you know about good study habits
By Benedict Carey
Published: September 6, 2010
Every September, millions of parents try a
kind of psychological witchcraft, to transform their summer-glazed campers into
fall students, their video-bugs into bookworms. Advice is cheap and all too
familiar: Clear a quiet work space. Stick to a homework schedule. Set goals.
Set boundaries. Do not bribe (except in emergencies).
And check out the classroom. Does Junior’s
learning style match the new teacher’s approach? Or the school’s philosophy?
Maybe the child isn’t “a good fit” for the school.
Such theories have developed in part because of
sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits
and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The
trouble is, no one can predict how.
Yet there are effective approaches to
learning, at least for those who are motivated. In recent years, cognitive
scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what
matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
The findings can help anyone, from a fourth
grader doing long division to a retiree taking on a new language. But they
directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they
have not caught on.
For instance, instead of sticking to one study
location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves
retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one
sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
“We have known these principles for some time,
and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn
them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the
University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts
of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
Take the notion that children have specific
learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some
are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the
relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public
Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas.
“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,” the researchers concluded.
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say.
Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater
Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to
identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning
atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the
But individual learning is another matter, and
psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study
habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that
students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library,
to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978
experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40
vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the
other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than
students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have
confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
The brain makes subtle associations between
what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the
authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors
the terms of the
“What we think is happening here is that, when
the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down
forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
Varying the type of material studied in a
single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and
speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain
than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this
for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical
pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with
strength, speed and skill drills.
The advantages of this approach to studying
can be striking, in some topic areas. In a study recently posted online by the
journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor of the
University of South Florida taught a group of fourth graders four equations,
each to calculate a different dimension of a prism. Half of the children
learned by studying repeated examples of one equation, say, calculating the
number of prism faces when given the number of sides at the base, then moving
on to the next type of calculation, studying repeated examples of that. The
other half studied mixed problem sets, which included examples of all four
types of calculations grouped together. Both groups solved sample problems
along the way, as they studied.
A day later, the researchers gave all of the
students a test on the material, presenting new problems of the same type. The
children who had studied mixed sets did twice as well as the others, outscoring
them 77 percent to 38 percent. The researchers have found the same in
experiments involving adults and younger children.
“When students see a list of problems, all of
the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the
problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.”
With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one,
which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like
they had to do on the test.”
These findings extend well beyond math, even
to aesthetic intuitive learning. In an experiment published last month in the
journal Psychology and Aging, researchers found that college students and
adults of retirement age were better able to distinguish the painting styles of
12 unfamiliar artists after viewing mixed collections (assortments, including
works from all 12) than after viewing a dozen works from one artist, all
together, then moving on to the next painter.
The finding undermines the common assumption
that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre,
or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College
and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is
that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of
paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,”
often subconsciously.
Cognitive scientists do not deny that
honest-to-goodness cramming can lead to a better grade on a given exam. But
hurriedly jam-packing a brain is akin to speed-packing a cheap suitcase, as
most students quickly learn — it holds its new load for a while, then most
everything falls out.
“With many students, it’s not like they can’t
remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L.
Roediger III, a psychologist at
When the neural suitcase is packed carefully
and gradually, it holds its contents for far, far longer. An hour of study
tonight, an hour on the weekend, another session a week from now: such
so-called spacing improves later recall, without requiring students to put in
more overall study effort or pay more attention, dozens of studies have found.
No one knows for sure why. It may be that the
brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what
it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself
self-reinforcing.
“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of
learning,” said Dr. Kornell. “When you forget something, it allows you to
relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
That’s one reason cognitive scientists see
testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of
learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is
not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way
the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the
future.
Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the
Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of
measuring a property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy
with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not
only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the
direction of more certainty, not less.
In one of his own experiments, Dr. Roediger
and Jeffrey Karpicke, also of Washington University, had college students study
science passages from a reading comprehension test, in short study periods.
When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they
did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the
material.
But if they studied the passage just once and
did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two
days later, and another given a week later.
“Testing has such bad connotation; people
think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe
we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful
learning tools we have.”
Of course, one reason the thought of testing
tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it
is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research
suggests. The harder it is to remember something, the harder it is to later
forget. This effect, which researchers call “desirable difficulty,” is evident
in daily life. The name of the actor who played Linc in “The Mod Squad”?
Francie’s brother in “A Tree Grows in
The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out,
the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.
None of which is to suggest that these
techniques — alternating study environments, mixing content, spacing study
sessions, self-testing or all the above — will turn a grade-A slacker into a
grade-A student. Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the
hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.
“In lab experiments, you’re able to control
for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true
in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same
time.”
But at the very least, the cognitive
techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not
have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or
empty theorizing.
This article has been revised to reflect the
following correction:
Correction: September 8, 2010
An article on Tuesday about the effectiveness
of various study habits described incorrectly the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle in physics. The principle holds that the act of measuring one
property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which
you can know another property (momentum, for example) — not that the act of
measuring a property of the particle alters that property.
A version of this article appeared in print on
September 7, 2010
© 2010 by The New York Times Company