How to supercharge the way you learn

Published: May 1^st 2015

Source: David Robson for BBC

Link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150429-how-to-learn-with-zero-effort

Science field: Health, Neuroscience, psychology.

Summary

What is the easiest way to learn? David Robson meets a group of scientists and memory champions competing to find techniques that make facts stick fast. Memory experts from across the world have been asked to conduct experiments to find the easiest, and most effective, way to memorize new information.

The task was superficially simple; they wanted to know if you had an hour to study a list of 80 Lithuanian words, what you have to do in order to remember them a week later. Many teams found some benefits. Rather than focusing on one single technique, they tended to use combinations of the following strategies:

1.                  Embracing ignorance:

Without any training, subjects were forced to guess the meaning of the Lithuanian words. Simply recognizing your own ignorance, it seems, primes your mind into action.

2.                  Surfing the memory’s waves:

You can easily waste time over-studying. So many of the entrants had designed algorithms that cleverly work out how strong your memory for each of the 80 words is, so they could rekindle it once you had started to forget.

3.                  Buffet studying:

One team found that simply cycling through all 80 words was effective.

4.                  Story-telling.

One entrant asked the participants to build a story with the words they were learning, for instance.

Glossary

-          Humble: not proud or not believing that you are important.

-          Switch: a small device, usually pushed up or down with your finger, that controls and turns on or off an electric current.

-          Map sth out: to plan something in detail.

-          Hiccup: a loud noise that you make in the throat without wanting to, caused by a sudden tightening of a muscle just below the chest and usually happening repeatedly

Review

On number 4, the team implements a “memory palace” – in which you try to link the words to objects in a room.

The program they designed might show a picture of a living room and give you the Lithuanian word “lova”: bed. You could then imagine your lover laying on a sofa bed.

This was, in fact, the technique that allowed the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci to learn Chinese to such an advanced level.

I can’t help wondering if all this is still removed from the kind of learning we need in everyday life. Indeed, it was useful to help memorise the individual words, I do not think that it helps you to hold a conversation, on a flight, in a bar or restaurant. Even though, Cooke agrees it’s just the first step.

The real challenge for these memory experts, however, isn’t just to make learning quick and effective. As every student knows the biggest obstacle to learning is distraction. We may need many more competitions before we can overcome that hurdle.

Written by Alba Pazos