The Most Common Obstacle to Effective Studying

Effective studying requires effective study strategies and techniques, but it also requires the right conceptualization of what studying is.
00:00 Introduction
00:54 The big misconception
1:54 What makes human memory different from a computer's
3:47 Some benefits and drawbacks to the human memory system
4:39 The key question
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How forgetting works: • Forgetting doesn't wor...
More effective studying: • What Study Gurus Get W...
Better note-taking: • The Surprising Truth A...
Free recall: • How to do free recall ...
Exam prep: • How to prepare for a f...
REFERENCES
The laundry passage comes from this famous 1972 paper, and is often used as a simple example of the power of prior knowledge.
Bransford, J. D., & Johnson, M. K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 11(6), 717-726. www.ebbinghaus.ru/wp-content/u...
The two-different-senses-of-foot demonstration comes from this paper, where the group who were cued to think of two different senses of the to-be-remembered word remembered it better than those who only were cued to think of one sense of that word.
Gartman, L. M., & Johnson, N. F. (1972). Massed versus distributed repetition of homographs: A test of the differential-encoding hypothesis. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 801-808. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Both of these are also cited in a Robert Bjork paper from 1979. Worth reading. Going to do a full video on this paper soon.
Bjork, R. A. (1979). Information‐processing analysis of college teaching. Educational Psychologist, 14(1), 15-23. www.researchgate.net/profile/...
If you're interested in witness misidentifications, check out www.innocenceproject.org. Eyewitness misidentifications are the leading cause of wrongful convictions, and there are some pretty simple steps to prevent them from happening: innocenceproject.org/eyewitne...

[@knw-seeker6836]

This transformation part is really the trickiest one but yet much more beneficial

[@AbhinavSinghbright]

I know your channel is new, but I do hope it blows up. Accurate information is a neccessity in today's time. Thanks for such a great video. Keep up the good work!

[@benjaminkeep]

Thanks for the support!

[@horaciorodd]

This channel is one the hidden gems of KZbin, SO GOOD!

[@benjaminkeep]

Many thanks! Here's to becoming a non-hidden gem!

[@rarogcmex]

Thank you. This is so underrated.

[@jti107]

nice explanation! you did a very good job explaining these learning concepts.

[@laragodinho8036]

Thank you, Benjamin!

[@ahmedibrahim7585]

You make really good material. Thank you!

[@HarshithEadara]

I came across your channel randomly but damn you are literally doing god's work and helping many students like myself. If you ever write a book, I'll be sure to give it a read. Loved your simple explanations.

[@ThirdLawPair]

Important point about knowledge structures is that they exist both in the perceptual models you are discussing, and also in deliberative maps. These are two separate resources developed by two separate learning mechanisms. In the comparison to computer memory, human memory is content-addressable whereas computer memory is index-adressable.

[@tisaname8490]

for AIs they plan to use something called vector databases that is turning storage into more content based addressing by checking the connections of that content with other similar contents (of course very deep underneath it's still just indexing) interesting stuff

[@doc-aj7842]

Thanks you for video

[@FruitsChinpoSamuraiG]

really good vid, as per usual

[@Yeeeeeehaw]

Great video!

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

This is absurdly amazing, and i almost skipped cause "yeah, i know, memorization (rehearsing the same stuff") is bad" but it was a video about mental image, brain engineering and memory and the cover of it dont do justice.

[@shakebraza196]

Knowing the right context is important.

[@iNeFFaBLeSaPiEN]

Thanks

[@adamlaing1890]

Hello! Thanks for your videos, they are amazing! I'm a science teacher and I'm struggling with all of the different approaches and schools of thought and trying to understand which ones are actually backed up by research. You mention here that it's almost never a good idea to "hide the ball." How does this interact with inquiry approaches or the 5E model, where the expectation is to explicitly "hide the ball" in order to draw out student thinking, student misconceptions, or allow them to guide their own thinking and ultimately derive the correct principles themselves? Should I still be emphasizing the correct ideas up front, even when that feels like it defeats the purpose of inquiry? (Side-note, I'm unclear on how supported by research inquiry approaches are, despite their being widespread. Do you have thoughts on the matter?)

[@sher.5027]

Write a book on learning for STEM. Please.

[@nicolasrealMD]

Great video. I need examples for better memorization techniques. Some information is just pretty hard to interralate with other concepts. For example, that the mutation of CFTR is diagnostic for cystic fibrosis or that it's new treatment is called lumacaftor or ivacaftor. I have to use mnemonics but even that is hard. Sorry for bad english

[@benjaminkeep]

Yes, for sure - some things are just hard to remember.

[@thorie79]

This is probably why my thousands of hours of Anki flashcards hasn't brought me fluency nirvana.

[@laragodinho8036]

Como eu transformo essa informação em algo que me ajude e seja importante pra mim?

[@miladragon]

Are you familiar with the work of Francis Shen at the University of Minnesota law school? He has a PhD in neuroscience and specializes in the intersection of the two areas. I saw a talk of his a couple years ago, discussing exactly this misconception about memory, and how that negatively impacts many asylum-seekers (if there's an inconsistency in their story when they tell it to, e.g., an officer and then a judge, that will often be interpreted as a lie rather than a function of how human memory works). I think he said he was part of an organization running clinics for judges to help correct this misconception.

[@benjaminkeep]

Interesting - thanks for sharing!

[@alexwa9959]

in my opionion (at least in german schools and universities) a big chunk of learning is memorizing stuff...

[@unknown-10k]

I know this question may seem weird but is the so-called "feynman technique" effective or was it overhyped ?? Is it just a fancy term for a concept that existed long before ??

[@benjaminkeep]

It's a very reasonable technique to develop conceptual understanding. It does a couple of things very well: you have to generate your own explanation of what you're learning in "simpler" terms (I think in the context of the technique it's like "explain it to a 10-year-old or something), meaning more active processing on the part of the learner. And it tackles the illusion of knowing because it becomes more obvious that you don't know something when you can't explain it simply. There are other ways of accomplishing this as well, but the Feynman technique seems fairly good. I doubt that he really invented it, but he certainly seems to have popularized the idea. I'm not aware of research testing the technique specifically. But there is a fair amount of research suggesting that teaching others can be a pretty effective way of learning something. Perhaps I'll make a video on that someday.

[@JoaoVitorBRgomes]

Abs do brasil!

[@rashedulkabir6227]

Please give me link of that video.

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

Sucks that "next video" leaves me totally on a limbo having no clue which is

[@edgarroberts8740]

I've never formally studied psychology, so correct me if I'm wrong, but this is schema theory, correct? We assimilate and process information based on where it fits in prefigured structures of related concepts/ideas in our mind? So the idea is good studying requires taking the things we want to learn, and transforming them into forms that we can usefully fit into our antecedent schema?

[@benjaminkeep]

My point is much more simple: students who think of learning as simply memorization are at a considerable disadvantage. You can relate it to schema theory or elaboration or the encoding process more generally, but I'm not making any claims here about the kinds of cognitive objects inside people's head (except that, for pretty much any practical knowledge you're learning, they should not be literal transcriptions of what you have read or hear). There's a variety of ideas related to schema theory - mental models, scripts, frames, etc. - and what "schema theory" is depends a little bit on which research tradition you're talking about: in literacy, in motor learning, etc. But all of these ideas are about the kinds of cognitive objects in our heads that help us to perform adaptively.

[@edgarroberts8740]

Thanks for the detailed reply. This is such a great channel!

[@asimian8500]

Memorization without context or more effectively incorporating it into your neural conceptual maps by connecting the new with the old is absolutely useless. You'll forget it all the next day.

[@bernardkung7306]

"The question isn't..." Aye, there's the rub.

[@yaboiavery5986]

This might be the dumbest comment ever but what do you mean by relevance? Does it mean things having a relationship? I assume it does but i just want to be sure 😁 thank you

[@benjaminkeep]

I mean: why would you learn this? What purpose does it serve? Why does it matter? To you specifically? A forensic anthropologist is using knowledge about the human body quite differently than a doctor. A pure mathematician is doing something a little bit different than an applied mathematician who is doing something different than the engineer who is doing something different than the biologist, even if they all may be working with of the same fundamental ideas or equations. If what you're learning has no relevance to your life - if it's not going to mean anything to you - then there's not much point in learning it.

[@kdme]

Isnt that how basically generative ai works? God we are very close