HOW WE LEARN by Benedict Carey

• To say it another way, the collective findings of modern learning science provide much more than a recipe for how to learn more efficiently. They describe a way of life.
• The brain is not like a muscle, at least not in any straightforward sense. It is something else altogether, sensitive to mood, to timing, to circadian rhythms, as well as to location, environment. It registers far more than we’re conscious of and often adds previously unnoticed details when revisiting a memory or learned fact. It works hard at night, during sleep, searching for hidden links and deeper significance in the day’s events. It has a strong preference for meaning over randomness, and finds nonsense offensive. It doesn’t take orders so well, either, as we all know—forgetting precious facts needed for an exam while somehow remembering entire scenes from The Godfather or the lineup of the 1986 Boston Red Sox.
• If the brain is a learning machine, then it’s an eccentric one. And it performs best when its quirks are exploited.
• Yet we work more effectively, scientists have found, when we continually alter our study routines and abandon any “dedicated space” in favor of varied locations.
• Sticking to one learning ritual, in other words, slows us down.
• Studies find that the brain picks up patterns more efficiently when presented with a mixed bag of related tasks than when it’s force-fed just one, no matter the age of the student or the subject area, whether Italian phrases or chemical bonds.
• Games are the best learning tool.
• The brain has modules, specialized components that divide the labor.
• Before wading into brain biology, I want to say a word about metaphors. They are imprecise, practically by definition. They obscure as much as they reveal. And they’re often self-serving,* crafted to serve some pet purpose—in the way that the “chemical imbalance” theory of depression supports the use of antidepressant medication. (No one knows what causes depression or why the drugs have the effects they do.)
• The cells that link to form these networks are called neurons. A neuron is essentially a biological switch. It receives signals from one side and—when it “flips” or fires—sends a signal out the other, to the neurons to which it’s linked.
• Pretesting is most helpful when people get prompt feedback
• Remember: These apparently simple attempts to communicate what you’ve learned, to yourself or others, are not merely a form of self-testing, in the conventional sense, but studying—the high-octane kind, 20 to 30 percent more powerful than if you continued sitting on your butt, staring at that outline. Better yet, those exercises will dispel the fluency illusion. They’ll expose what you don’t know, where you’re confused, what you’ve forgotten—and fast.
• An insight problem, by definition, is one that requires a person to shift his or her perspective and view the problem in a novel way.
• Self-testing is one of the strongest study techniques there is.
• Verbatim copying adds very little to the depth of your learning, and the same goes for looking over highlighted text or formulas.
• Deliberate interruption is not the same as quitting.
• Making your memory work a little harder—by self-quizzing, for example, or spacing out study time—sharpens the imprint of what you know, and exposes fluency’s effects.
• Focusing on one skill at a time—a musical scale, free throws, the quadratic formula—leads quickly to noticeable, tangible improvement. But over time, such focused practice actually limits our development of each skill. Mixing or “interleaving” multiple skills in a practice session, by contrast, sharpens our grasp of all of them.