How to Learn Better: Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits

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 University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”

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 Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.

“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.

Free ebook: iPhone 4S Starter Guide

If you're the lucky owner of an iPhone 4S, or are planning to get one, you'll want to download the free iPhone 4S Starter Guide from the iBookstore. Just released by Macworld, the book covers the basics, including the hardware, the gestures for navigating, and activating your phone, as well as various tips and tricks. It then goes on to cover the major features of the iPhone 4S, including Notification Center, Siri, and iCloud. Even if you don't have an iPhone 4S, but are running iOS 5, this book could be useful to you. You can read moe about the book on the Macworld website.

Macworld also offers an iOS 5 Upgrade Guide for $2.99.

And while we're talking about freebies, the 2012 iPhone and iPod Buyers Guide is now available as a free download from iLounge. The 218-page book has a wealth of information about accessories, apps, and games. Features include the top 100 games of 2011, a tour of iOS 5, iClloud, and iTunes Match, 100 essential apps, iLounge's Best of the Year and Readers Choice Awards, a glossary, a history of Apple devices from 2001-2011, resale value of used devices, and an article on understanding Apple's cameras. The book is available as a pdf file in two different versions: a book-like version with two-page spreads, and a single-page version that works better on an iPad.

Highly recommended movie: "The Tree of Life" (new on DVD)

Pictures__photos_from_the_tree_of_life_-_imdb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/

I'm watching it on a 21" computer monitor with a standard DVD from Netflix. But
I can imagine how much more impact it would have on the big screen
with great sound. (It's the only DVD I recall ever seeing with a
recommendation before the feature starts to crank the sound way up if you want to appreciate
better sound quality.) I can easily imagine it winning Best Sound Design at the next Oscars.

Yes, it is long, lyrical, but also one of the most exquisitely beautiful
films I've ever seen in my life, and among the most spiritual in a Judeo-Christian way. (It
starts off with a title slide that's a Bible verse. What was the last
Hollywood film you saw which did *that*?)

It's like watching...light as
poetry (with large dashes of the best of BBC's "Planet Earth" series
(plus space) you could imagine).

Maybe it's the domestic details from the '50s, too, which grab me, since Jo and I grew up roughly the same years as the children in the movie. ;-)

What I added on Facebook when a friend commented that Netflix users only gave it a 3 overall (out of 5):

I think it's either the sort of film you'll love or hate. I'd rate it higher than 3, probably 4 or 5. If you have no "poet" in you, you'll rate it lower (esp. if you have to have car chases and shootouts in every film you watch ;-)

I just finished watching it, BTW, watched the credits (carefully) to the very end. (One, quite curiously, was something like "Center for Visual Music."(!) There are a *lot* of songs in this movie. For what it's worth, I watched it with the closed-captioning on. (Often the words are just whispered. So without caption, yeah, I'd agree: crank up the volume as they warn you at the start.)