Chapter 7 Flashcards
(22 cards)
What does chunking have to do with working memory?
Why do you need to solve a problem yourself as part of the chunking process?
Why can’t you just look at the solution in the back of the book, understand it, and then move on?
What are some additional things you can do to help smooth your chunks right before a test? What is the testing effect?
Once you’ve practiced a problem a few times, pause and see if you can sense the feeling of rightness that occurs when you realize what the next step in the solution process is.
What is the Law of Serendipity? Think of an example from your own experiences that typifies this idea.
How does choking differ from knowledge collapse?
Students fool themselves into thinking that they are learning best by reading the material instead of by testing themselves through recall.
How can you keep yourself from falling into this commontrap?
Did you remember to skim ahead and check the questions at the end of the chapter to help to help you start building chunks of understanding?
STEPS TO BUILDING A POWERFUL CHUNK
- Work a key problem all the way through on paper.
(You should have the solution to this problem available, either because you’ve already worked it or because it’s an asolved problem from your book. But don’t look at the solution unless you absolutelyhave to!)
As you work through this problem, there should be no cheating, skippingsteps, or saying, “Yeah, I’ve got it” before you’ve fully worked it out.
Make sure each step makes sense. - Do another repetition of the problem, paying attention to the key processes.
If it seems a little odd to work a problem again, keep in mind that youwould never learn to play a song on the guitar by playing it only once, or work out by lifting a weight a single time. - Take a break.
You can study other aspects of the subject if you need to, but then godo something different.
Work at your part-time job, study a different subject, or go play basketball.
You need to give your diffuse mode time to internalize the problem. - Sleep.
Before you go to sleep, work the problem again.
If you get stuck, listen to the problem.
Let your subconscious tell you what to do next. - Do another repetition. As soon as you can, the next day, work the problem again.
You should see that you are able to solve the problem more quickly now. Your understanding should be deeper. You may even wonder why you ever had any trouble with it.
At this point, you can start lightening up on computing each step.
Keep your focus on the parts of the problem that are the most difficult for you.
This continued focus on the hard stuff is called “deliberate practice.”” Although it can sometimes betiring, it is one of the most important aspects of productive studying. An alternative orsupplement at this point is to see whether you can do a similar problem with ease.) - Add a new problem.
Pick another key problem and begin working on it in the same way that you did the first problem. The solution to this problem will become the secondchunk in your chunked library.
Repeat steps one through five on this new problem.
And after you become comfortable with that problem, move on to another.
You will be surprised how even just a few solid chunks in your library can greatly enhance your mastery of the material and your ability to solve new problems efficiently. - Do “active” repetitions.
Mentally review key problem steps in your mind while doing something active, such as walking to the library or exercising.
You can also use spare minutes to review as you are waiting for a bus, sitting in the passenger seat of a car, ortwiddling your thumbs until a professor arrives in the classroom.
This type of active rehearsal helps strengthen your ability to recall key ideas when you are solving homework problems or taking a test.
THE LAW OF SERENDIPITY
Remember, Lady Luck favors the one who tries.
So don’t feel overwhelmed with everything you need to learn about a new subject.
Instead, focus on nailing down a few key ideas.
You’ll be surprised at how much that simple framework can help.
CHUNK-PUTERS” ARE GREAT!
Between being a full-time engineering student and also working a full-time job as an engineering tech, I have too much academic work to keep it all in the forefront of my mind.
So my mental trick is to create big chunks for different areas—thermo class, machinedesign, programming, et cetera.
When I need to recall an individual project, I set my current focus aside and reference the desired chunk, which is like a link on my computer desktop.
I can either focus on a specific area or, in diffuse mode, I can look at the complete desktop and find conceptual links between chunks.
When I have a clean and organizedmental desktop, I can make connections more easily.
It increases my mental agility and also allows me to bore deeper into any one topic more easily.
WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT REMEMBERING FROM ONE OF HISTORY’S GREATEST PSYCHOLOGISTS
A curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better by active than bypassive repetition.
I mean that in learning by heart (for example), when we almost know the piece, it pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within than to look at the bookagain.
If we recover the words in the former way, we shall probably know them the next time;
if in the latter way, we shall very likely need the book once more.
Build a Mental Solution Library
A key to building mental flexibility and expertise is to build your library of chunked solution patterns.
This is your rapid-access data bank—always handy in a pinch. This idea isn’t just useful for math and science problems—it applies to many areas in life. That’s why, for example, it’s always a good strategy to look at where the emergency exits are relative to your seat on an airplane or your room in a hotel.
What is the generation effect?
Building and strengthening an increasingly interconnected web of neurons—enriching and strengthening your chunks. So the material helps you learn it much more effectively than simply rereading it.
How could a musician get the most out of their practice?
A master violinist, for example,
doesn’t just play a musical piece from beginning to end, over and over again. Instead, she focuses on the hardest parts of the piece—the parts where the
fingers fumble and the mind becomes confused.
You should be like that in
your own deliberate practice, focusing and becoming quicker at the hardest parts of the solution procedures you are trying to learn.
What is the best form of deliberate practice in study?
Research has shown that the more effort you put into recalling material, the deeper it embeds itself into your memory.
Recall, not simple rereading, is the best form of deliberate practice in study.
What’s the difference between a lesser-ranked player at chess compared to a grand master? How could one get to that point?
The difference between lesser-ranked players and grand masters is that grand masters devote far more time to figuring out what their weaknesses are and working to strengthen those areas.
It’s not as easy as just sitting around and playing chess for fun.
But in the end, the results can be far more gratifying.
What is knowledge collapse?
Sometimes you hit a wall in constructing your understanding.
Things that made sense before can suddenly seem confusing.
This type of “knowledge collapse” seems to occur when your mind is restructuring its understanding—building a more solid foundation.
In the case
of language learners, they experience occasional periods when the foreign language suddenly seems as comprehensible as Klingon.
Remember—it takes time to assimilate new knowledge.
You will go through some periods when you seem to take an exasperating step backward in your understanding.
This a natural phenomenon that means your mind is
wrestling deeply with the material.
You’ll find that when you emerge from these periods of temporary frustration, your knowledge base will take a
surprising step forward.
How and why can organization help you learn quickly?
In preparation for a test, have your problems and solutions neatly organized so you can go over them quickly.
Some students tape handwritten solutions to problems on the relevant pages of their textbook so everything is readily
available.
(Use painter’s masking tape or sticky notes if you plan to later return a book.)
The handwritten solution is important because writing by hand increases the odds that what is written will be retained in memory.
Alternatively, keep a binder handy with important problems and solutions from the class and the book, so you can go over them again before tests.
How does choking usually occur? How can you prevent choking on test?
Here’s one of the most important reasons to have well-chunked solution methods readily in mind:
They help prevent choking on tests.
Choking—panicking to the point where you freeze—can happen when your working memory is filled to capacity, yet you still don’t have enough room for the
additional critical pieces you need to solve a problem.
Chunking compresses
your knowledge and makes room in your working memory for those pieces so you don’t go into mental overload so easily. Also, by making more room in
your working memory, you have a better chance of remembering important problem-solving details.
How can testing be a valuable tool in learning? What is the testing effect? Have you tried it? How can it help you chunk your learning? What plan could you make to turn it into a positive habit?
Testing in itself is a powerful learning experience.
It changes and adds to what you know, also making dramatic improvements in your ability to retain the material.
This improvement in knowledge because of test taking is called the testing effect.
It seems to occur because testing strengthens and stabilizes the related neural
patterns in your brain.
This is precisely what we saw in chapter 4, in the
“Practice Makes Permanent” section, with the picture of the darkening patterns in the brain that occurs with repetition.
Improvement because of the testing effect occurs even when the test performance is bad and no feedback is given.
When you are self-testing while
you are studying, however, you want to do your best to get feedback and check your answers using solutions manuals, the back of the book, or wherever the solution may lie.
One reason why building solid chunks is so helpful is that you get plenty of mini-tests in while you are creating those chunks. Studies have shown that
students, and even educators, are often shockingly unaware of the benefits of this kind of mini-testing through retrieval practice.
Students think they are just checking how well they’re doing when they do a mini-test of their recall.
But this active test of recall is one of the best learning methods—better than just sitting passively and rereading!
