Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits | Hacker News Reader

Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits

nytimes.com

90 pointsjamesbritt18 comments

Summary being: study multiple times, spaced out, in different locations, and work on multiple related topics in a time period rather than finishing one before starting the next.

That multiple locations works better than a single one is pretty counter to everything people parrot, but makes sense in retrospect: everything in your mind is associated with everything else. If you teach it something in only one location, it's not as easy to recall it in another location. More locations break that location-centric quality.

And: hard tests teach better than easier ones. They make you examine your knowledge more thoroughly, meaning you're more likely to retain it (Duh, but it's nice to hear it scientifically supported). So why do we keep catering to the lowest common denominator?

We compartmentalize the scientific method to the realm of um...science subject matter.

It's a result of our tendency to compartmentalize knowledge. Make sense, when you don't want to spend much brain power thinking about the interconnections, not so much when you're on the job coding up some solution to problems or trying to find better way to teach children.

So in our case, teachers just don't use the scientific inquiry to do research. However, we also know that teaching degrees aren't predictor of student performance. So degrees seem to me to be entirely disconnected with scientific study of teaching/neuroscience/whatever_science_related_field_to_education.

That multiple locations works better than a single one is pretty counter to everything people parrot,

Do people really parrot that? I've spent my fair share of time in the educational system myself, my wife is a teacher, and I've got a number of children in school, and I've never once heard anyone recommend that pupils study in a single location.

Every suggestion I've heard from any school system has been to set up a single, quiet "homework space". And essentially anyone who's gone through said system says the same thing, without examining it - it's what they were told, it effectively worked for them, why look into it more?

It's what I was told growing up, and now I'm wondering if studying in a variety of locations might not help one to acquire better focusing skills.

To be able to do some quick studying or review no matter where your (provided you have the material) seems an epic win. Stuck on a bus? Do some studying. In a boring class? Study for another one.

It's sort of like writers who say they have a schedule they stick to, no matter what; they don't wait for the magic inspiration, they sit their ass down and get to work. Likewise, if you insist on waiting until you have the Just So study environment, you may never get to studying, or will do a lot less of it.

>> And: hard tests teach better than easier ones.

Yes... but grade inflation, indeed grade obsession, is so established in the US that it is quite a bold anti-establishment proposal to take that road.

I recall giving a quick quiz at a "quantitative literacy" course at a junior college during my US years. I dared to ask for the number of proper subsets of a set with 4 elements. We had gone over the concept of proper set, the formula (and justification) for the cardinality of the power set, and various problems. But not this very kind of problem (say, with a set of 5 elements...).

I almost made the news, in a bad way. I got off the hook by reminding them that we dropped (as usual) their lowest bunch of quizzes, homework was extra credit, etc... Sigh...

I wrote the following to the article's author:

While your article attacks the advice that one should study in a consistent, distraction-free environment, it only pays lip service to the importance of motivation and focus. Yet most educators will tell you that motivation and focus are prerequisites for effective learning. Students ignore this conventional wisdom at their peril -- sporadic, effort-free "study" in novel contexts is assuredly less effective than genuine, effortful undistracted study, irrespective of other factors.

If you had reviewed the literature[1] on the effects of distractions on learning, you might have realized that the conventional wisdom on focused study is, in fact, extremely valuable. Instead, I worry your article will see hundreds of students studying even more poorly than they already do, filled with a sophmoric confidence that what they are doing is scientifically superior to the more challenging alternative.

[1] E.g., a quick search turned up Helene Hembrooke and Geri Gay "The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments" 10.1007/BF02940852

Actually, if you had read the article to the end, or in a different location, you might have noticed and remembered where the article says:

"None of which is to suggest that these techniques...will turn a grade-A slacker into a grade-A student. Motivation matters."

That is hardly "lip service". It is an explicit declaration that there are no silver bullets when it comes to successful studying except for hard work and discipline.

Well, did read it to the end. "Lip service" means that those things got mentioned, but not elaborated upon or strongly stressed.

Not to belabour the point or be pedantic but as far as I am aware, "Lip service" implies a lack of conviction not elaboration.

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&oq=&langpair=e...

Relevant:

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...

I'd guess that the closer your study pattern follows this optimal spaced repetition pattern, the faster and better you learn stuff. This is related to the result on mixing things up during each study session.

Are there any free tools that help with this?

Anki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anki and Mnemosyne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemosyne_(software)

I like both... and spaced repetition will change the way you learn forever

My webapp: http://flashcarddb.com/

This isn't studying, but memorizing. Studying is when you have to think critically about a subject and understand it, whereas with memorizing you just have to remember the magic phrase or word that get's you points on a test.

I find that having a single, clean, quiet place is the best for me.

I don't think there's anything in that article that suggests that the techniques only improved memorizing and not your specific definition of studying. Also, there are definitely things that I have learned and since forgotten that I had to think critically about and understand. I think this article is about techniques to improve the retention of knowledge.

Take, for example, the math students who had to apply formulas to find different properties of prisms. The students who learned and practiced all of the formulas at once (which most likely requires critical thinking to determine what each problem is asking for) did much better than the students who just practiced sets of problems for each formula sequentially (which is more like memorization).

I thought the most interesting part of the article wasn't the findings on varied environments or multiple shorter study sessions, but that studying multiple things in one session improved retention. Speculating as to why, the brain subconsciously makes connections between the different topics, strengthening each concept.

I'm not saying memorization has no purpose. On the contrary, it's pretty much required if you don't want to have to re-derive everything every time you go to use it.

Also FTA: 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.

This says nothing about studying in the way I defined it.

never! give me my cave or give me death (or inability to think, roughly equal).

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