Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down. | Hacker News Reader

Close the Book. Recall. Write It Down.

chronicle.com

77 pointsmsie30 comments

The interesting thing, to me, is that this effect could serve as an explanation for the phenomenon described yesterday in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=580209 . Namely, the independent study technique might naturally encourage this mode of learning by sheer accident. In short, you are studying to prepare for a discussion, rather than memorizing for an exam. This naturally causes you to 'close the book', recall, and then speak it out loud. (This article reports that speaking out loud is better than just recalling.)

In a conventional 'learn to test' scenario, one might feel naturally compelled to read and reread, or to take notes with the book open, simply out of desperation.

What do you think? Could the success of 'Unschooling' be largely due to the very effect described in the current article?

The actual discussion will also improve recall, because you are recalling the information in many ways, and exercising your mental model of it. The process of discussion gives you practice in recalling and using the information.

You may also learn something from the discussion itself, become aware of gaps, fill those gaps, get addition points of view and ways to think about it, reasons for holding opinions, which ones seem right but are wrong and why (and which ones seemed stupid at first but - dramatically - aren't). The social aspect, and the competitive aspect, will help you engage. Later, you might even recall some aspects episodically, e.g. "Jones said this, and Bloggs undercut him, and then I showed they were both wrong, and everyone laughed". Memorable.

I agree that anticipation of a discussion will also make your preparation for it more effective.

Perhaps that's why oral exams seem to work much better for me than written ones.

This reminds me of the single best advice ever given to me about how to learn a difficult subject: Pretend that you are teaching it to an invisible audience, lesson by lesson. It is amazing how much faster you can comprehend even very complex topics this way.

Preferably do this while wearing a bluetooth headset (it can be turned off) so people don't think you are crazy.

Best use of bluetooth headsets ever (I hate them)

I also use headsets without music when I don't want to be disturbed.

For people that really grasp a subject seemingly without effort, do you think they have some inner dialogue that is explaining it to an "invisble crowd"?

I'm just curious how a Feynman-like person digests new information.

cum docemus, discimus

Ok, so it isn't particularly new advice.

Seems like it works the same way that showing somebody else your unfixable bug and explaining to them why it's impossible works for fixing it. Having to teach/explain/write about a topic without a book forces you to examine your implicit beliefs about it, to show you where you've left holes.

I think you're partially right, but I think there's also something else going on here. The key about the memory is recall. Just writing multiple times (ie reading the book over and over) doesn't increase the reliability of memorization as much as reading the address. It seems the act of forcing the brain to find the information makes it put more effort into indexing that piece of info. I think that's apart from the effect you are talking about which is about how you integrate information when forced to explain it in a coherent way.

Maybe a way to think about it is that practicing placing it into memory makes you get better at placing it into memory; and practicing recalling that information from memory makes you get get better at recalling it from memory.

I've noticed that I know I lot of things that are difficult for me to recall: there's not much point having something in memory if you can't recall it, so maybe that's the important thing to practice?

If someone has access to ScienceDirect or Wiley InterScience they can read the actual papers:

ScienceDirect - Contemporary Educational Psychology : The limited benefits of rereading educational texts/ (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...)

Wiley InterScience - Psychological Science : The Read-Recite-Review Study Strategy: Effective and Portable (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122269051/abstrac...)

Psychological Science is available on EBSCOhost, but articles are embargoed.

Can't help but add Socrates' comments to Phaedrus in the Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (around section 274), to the effect that writing destroys man's faculty of memory, and bestows only a superficial sort of learning.

As Socrates relates it, the Egyptian god Theuth describes various inventions to the king Thamus:

"But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:tex...

"Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology [writing] did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom)." - Nicholas Carr (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google)

The Dr Frankenstein theme.

BTW strictly speaking, that's criticizing reading, not writing. Which may sound like a distinction without a difference, but I find the act of writing improves my recall; and, sadly, reading my notes profoundly unenlightening.

Also, the article says it's even more effective (I must try this) to say it aloud. I expect further interactivity with ones mental model (problem solving, discussion, argument) improves it further still.

> they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence [...]; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing;

Somewhat OT, but this seems to apply very well to the effect of Google on many of us too. While this originally referred simply to the 'availability' of knowledge in external sources, with Google (and the Internet as a whole) it becomes 'easy accessibility', which is perhaps even more dangerous. Dangerous unless we make conscious effort to avoid this phenomenon and use the technology for our enrichment.

Yes. Recently I make increased efforts to not just recall information, but also sources.

Alternatively:

Don't miss class. Take good notes. Read the book. Party the night before the test.

I'm still amazed that half my fraternity brothers spent 40 hours per week "studying" and the other half spent 40 hours drinking beer and playing bridge. There was no correlation between which group you were in and your grades.

The same applies to life in general.

but are you sure that there weren't two different types of people? That some people inherently need to study 40 hours, while others can party them away?

Your observation matches my own, but I'm not at all certain that it's not due to differences in learning style.

This all depends on if you know how to really read a book, how to take good notes, and what to do with notes. :)

> Don't miss class. Take good notes. Read the book. Party the night before the test.

In my experience taking notes is only second-best, because you sit in class and take notes, and then sit at home and think about your notes. I tend to contract both steps to: Sit in class and think very hard.

Anecdotal evidence from friends who had broken their writing hands and were forced to use that tactic, support this habit.

When I wanted to make sure that I knew a class subject area front and back, I'd get into a room with a whiteboard. Preferably with other students.

We'd make an agenda, or use a study guide, and take turns presenting the material at the white board.

You feel yourself writing it. You read it. You say it. You hear it.

It worked like gangbusters. A wild-draw-4 of learning styles.

I have always been told that recall is worst for that you only hear, better for that you read, gets better if you write it down, and best if you teach it. (Funny enough, I never bothered to look it up until now, and I cant find a good reference by googling.)

My take away on this is that I never bothered reading my lecture notes, I took notes only to write down what I heard to improve my recall of it.

Also, I often tried to hold a mini lecture or summary when I was studying with my friends to see if what I understood was transferable to them, and if not, what I was missing to make it so. Often it was me lacking understanding in some area, but unconciously denying it.

In the third level of knowledge, you understand the material and are able to explain things in your own words. You can draw new relationships between facts. You need to be able to remember details to explain things in your own words - for a long time I deluded myself that I could understand the material because I could follow along with the explanation easily enough as I read it. But you do not truly understand something until you can explain it in your own words from memory.

http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/03/learning-journal-a...

I got good grades in college and retained none of the information. Perhaps it was because the tests were open book and I am good at applying rules to a given problem, but my memory is terrible. Now I want to be able to derive everything from as close to first principles as I can. Then if I forget I can recreate the material.

What's a book?

A container of distilled knowledge. Quite nice for people with patience :)

Isn't that what blogs are for? ;)

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