About emotional controle in learning and study skills
A good example of how Kahnemann’s theses work in practice (see previous post) is study technique, and learning in general. When you are sitting with a book, a lecture or web course or the like and really want to try to learn something (and remember it), it is easy to slip into the quick thinking track and do what feels best and at first glance seems easiest. But the easiest way is not the most effective!
Research1) has clearly shown that people learn better and remember much more if they choose the slow train of thought instead, but in order to do so, they need to recognise and be prepared for the fact that it feels worse because it is more difficult and more work in the short term.
The fast track could be, for example, reading the text several times and both underlining and using coloured highlighters. Or sitting in a lecture and taking notes so that the pen glows, writing down as much as possible. Sure, these methods can also be exhausting, but it still feels more comfortable and familiar to use them. They don’t challenge the brain as much as the slow track does. In which case you choose to read the text only twice, first to get an overall insight into the topic and then an intensive second read-through where you actively look for the important things while often stopping, summarising the paragraph you just read, retelling the content to yourself (without cheating = put the text away so you can’t look in it!). One important step is to write questions for yourself to answer a few hours later. That’s right, several hours later, not immediately. For this second reading to work, you have to tell yourself not to read the text again. One of the reasons why multiple read-throughs with underlining and highlighting do not work very well is that you trick yourself with the pleasant idea that “next time I read this, it will sink in…” I myself remember a course in study techniques I took at the beginning of medical school. We had to try to cross out the text with a black marker after the second reading! So that we could never read it again. It’s a bit nerve-wracking until you learn to trust your memory, but extremely effective. (That method is best suited to compendiums and cheap books, and is not suitable for expensive textbooks and reference books where you may need to look up facts for a long time.)
Retrieving new knowledge from memory is an important step in activating learning and making it ‘stick’. Other types of active rehearsal can also be used. A powerful example is to sit for a while with a fellow student the next day and recount different passages to each other, ask each other about important points, etc.
- A good summary can be found in the book “Outsmart your brain” by Daniel Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia. It also contains many good practical tips and descriptions of methods you can practice to become better at learning new skills.