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| Roadblocks to Academic Learning |
Roadblocks to Academic Learning
For students, this section may contain the most important information in the whole book, perhaps even the most important information in a whole life-time of learning! As discussed above, each of the three classifications of memory contain features that impose formidable roadblocks to academic learning:
1. Your brain has no specialized memory banks for storing written material.
2. Your immediate-term memory tends to forget items after 30 seconds.
3. Your working memory can only keep track of about seven items at a time.
No wonder learning from lectures and studying from textbooks are challenging tasks! Our brains are not well adapted for dealing with written information. We can deal with a maximum of seven items at the same time in our conscious mind, and even those seven items will fade from consciousness in about 30 seconds if they are not used productively. Fortunately, there are strategies for overcoming each of these roadblocks.
Dealing with written material
As you study written or printed material, you are striving to create declarative (explicit) memories with semantic content. However, you have no inherent neural networks devoted to semantic content, so you have to piggyback onto other networks.
Your sensory networks for hearing and vision are among the most highly developed networks available for conscious use. Thus you have a choice of two effective strategies: make use of your hearing networks by sounding out the written material so your brain can hear it as well as see it, or make better use of your visual networks by visualizing the situations that printed words depict.
Aural learners tend to use phonics when learning to read and are often better at spelling and learning foreign languages. Visual learners tend to use the sight method when learning to read and are often better at spatial tasks and problem solving. The best strategy is to switch back and forth between aural and visual modes to best suit the material you are studying.
Dealing with the 30 second factor
Another major challenge for students is to find ways to over-ride the tendency of immediate-term memory to automatically delete items after 30 seconds.
How can you manage to remember the contents of an entire lecture? The blunt truth is that you cannot. You can only select what you regard as the most important components of a lecture. Then, one at a time, you can promote each chosen component to short-term memory by mentally emphasizing and reviewing it. The challenge is to salt away each important component in short-term memory before you encounter the next nugget of information.
When dealing with written material, you have the luxury of being able to reread important passages as often as you like. However, it is best to divide long passages into smaller segments that can be read completely within 30 seconds. Otherwise you will tend to forget the beginning of a passage by the time you get to the end of it.
Dealing with the seven item limit
The limit of seven items in working memory is a fundamental characteristic of the human brain. Failure to take this limitation into account underlies much of the frustration associated with learning and thinking tasks. If you try to keep track of more than seven data items at a time, you start to forget some of them. Fortunately, there are two basic strategies to compensate for this limitation.
First, you must focus your attention on one task at a time. Diversions and idle thoughts can take up valuable spaces in your working memory, and thus limit your ability to work on challenging tasks. If your mind wanders, you may only have three or four instead of seven spaces available in your working memory.
Second, you need to systematically group similar items together in your mind so that a whole group only takes up only one space in your working memory. The causes of World War II, the positions of chess pieces after the third move in a game, or the Laws of Thermodynamics should each be organized and grouped into a single item in working memory. Your capacity to manage information in working memory can thus be greatly enhanced.
For students, this section may contain the most important information in the whole book, perhaps even the most important information in a whole life-time of learning! As discussed above, each of the three classifications of memory contain features that impose formidable roadblocks to academic learning:
1. Your brain has no specialized memory banks for storing written material.
2. Your immediate-term memory tends to forget items after 30 seconds.
3. Your working memory can only keep track of about seven items at a time.
No wonder learning from lectures and studying from textbooks are challenging tasks! Our brains are not well adapted for dealing with written information. We can deal with a maximum of seven items at the same time in our conscious mind, and even those seven items will fade from consciousness in about 30 seconds if they are not used productively. Fortunately, there are strategies for overcoming each of these roadblocks.
Dealing with written material
As you study written or printed material, you are striving to create declarative (explicit) memories with semantic content. However, you have no inherent neural networks devoted to semantic content, so you have to piggyback onto other networks.
Your sensory networks for hearing and vision are among the most highly developed networks available for conscious use. Thus you have a choice of two effective strategies: make use of your hearing networks by sounding out the written material so your brain can hear it as well as see it, or make better use of your visual networks by visualizing the situations that printed words depict.
Aural learners tend to use phonics when learning to read and are often better at spelling and learning foreign languages. Visual learners tend to use the sight method when learning to read and are often better at spatial tasks and problem solving. The best strategy is to switch back and forth between aural and visual modes to best suit the material you are studying.
Dealing with the 30 second factor
Another major challenge for students is to find ways to over-ride the tendency of immediate-term memory to automatically delete items after 30 seconds.
How can you manage to remember the contents of an entire lecture? The blunt truth is that you cannot. You can only select what you regard as the most important components of a lecture. Then, one at a time, you can promote each chosen component to short-term memory by mentally emphasizing and reviewing it. The challenge is to salt away each important component in short-term memory before you encounter the next nugget of information.
When dealing with written material, you have the luxury of being able to reread important passages as often as you like. However, it is best to divide long passages into smaller segments that can be read completely within 30 seconds. Otherwise you will tend to forget the beginning of a passage by the time you get to the end of it.
Dealing with the seven item limit
The limit of seven items in working memory is a fundamental characteristic of the human brain. Failure to take this limitation into account underlies much of the frustration associated with learning and thinking tasks. If you try to keep track of more than seven data items at a time, you start to forget some of them. Fortunately, there are two basic strategies to compensate for this limitation.
First, you must focus your attention on one task at a time. Diversions and idle thoughts can take up valuable spaces in your working memory, and thus limit your ability to work on challenging tasks. If your mind wanders, you may only have three or four instead of seven spaces available in your working memory.
Second, you need to systematically group similar items together in your mind so that a whole group only takes up only one space in your working memory. The causes of World War II, the positions of chess pieces after the third move in a game, or the Laws of Thermodynamics should each be organized and grouped into a single item in working memory. Your capacity to manage information in working memory can thus be greatly enhanced.
