PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Driving Simulator, Long-Term Memory, Hermann Ebbinghaus
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
THE SCIENCE OF LEARNING
Long-Term Learning
● While cramming for a test may lead to fast learning in the short-term, you will inevitably
forget most of the material after a few days, having to relearn it from scratch
● Our true goal as students is efficient long term learning - to study in such a way that the
learning sticks with us over the long term
Learning Outcomes
1. Long-term learning:
● Why many popular study methods lead to short-term learning, but it is long-term
learning that is most critical
2. Where to study:
● Why you should be mindful of distractions that interrupt your study time and take
steps to suppress them
3. How to study:
● Why rereading, highlighting, and copying notes verbatim are poor study methods
● Why practice testing (i.e. retrieval practice) promotes better long term learning
● Why during retrieval practice, it is wise to keep material out of view until you’re
finished retrieving
● Why during retrieval practice, it is wise to mix up topics from different segments
of the course
4. Desirable difficulties:
● Why challenging study strategies that initially slow down learning can actually be
more efficient in the long run
Busy Study Environments
● We are surrounded by distractions that constantly compete for our attention
● Humans are awful multitaskers
Task-Switching
● Multitasking - the simultaneous completion of two or more tasks
○ Our brains are not wired to do two things at once
● Instead, we seem to switch between multiple tasks and perceive it as being more
efficient, even though it almost always decreases efficiency overall
● Completing tasks is made less efficient when you are constantly switching between
tasks
Task-Switching in the Real World
● In one experiment, three groups of people were put in a driving simulator under different
conditions:
○ Driving normally
○ Driving drunk
○ Driving while talking on a cellphone (handheld or hands free)
Document Summary
While cramming for a test may lead to fast learning in the short-term, you will inevitably forget most of the material after a few days, having to relearn it from scratch. Our true goal as students is efficient long term learning - to study in such a way that the learning sticks with us over the long term. Why many popular study methods lead to short-term learning, but it is long-term learning that is most critical: where to study: Why you should be mindful of distractions that interrupt your study time and take steps to suppress them: how to study: Why rereading, highlighting, and copying notes verbatim are poor study methods. Why practice testing (i. e. retrieval practice) promotes better long term learning. Why during retrieval practice, it is wise to keep material out of view until you"re finished retrieving. Why during retrieval practice, it is wise to mix up topics from different segments of the course: desirable difficulties:
