Cognition and Learning Strategies

Learning means

picking up new things and being able to remember and apply them to everyday life

Learning depends on memory and attention. It isn’t easy and it takes time to learn and understand something.

Exposure and how it affects learning

Learning is affected by what you already know and what you’re exposed to. This affects how you understand something and how you develop.

Basic Concept of Learning:

Learning material → Sensory Memory → Working Memory → Long-term Memory

Sensory Memory

Attention: allows for selection and focus

This blocks out irrelevant stimulants

Allows for concentration

Working Memory

Thinking about stuff

Consciously rehearsing and applying information

It is limited in capacity

Long-term Memory

Has an unlimited capacity

Information that is remembered because it has been rehearsed many times.

Choke point: Narrow focus of attention

Not being aware of everything being missed.

Solution: Avoid distractions and be fully focused.

Choke point: Concentration, mental effort

Limited resource and needs full focus.

Solution: Deliberate practice, recalling, applying, over-learning to make automatic.

Choke point: Working memory has a limited capacity.

It is always being used, ex: talking, studying, literally anything.

If you stop rehearsing it, it is easy to forget what you have just grasped.

Solution: Chunking.

Chunking

Organizing information into meaningful chunks. (4 big chunks of information)

• Information categorized

• Can retain a lot more though working memory

• Coherent chunks that are distinctive

Choke point: Forgetting in Working Memory

Solution: Over-learning information (resists that interference)

Why do we forget?

Decay and Interference

Decay

strength of memory fading over time

Interference

other information that you’re learning “over-writing” what material you learned earlier

Pitfall: Attention with Multi-tasking

It’s harmful for learning, your focus is spread out thin.

Solution: removing distractions

Pitfall: Using the wrong learning strategies

Inefficient learning strategies are easy to do: glossing over material but not actually learning

Solution: Giving the material meaning, elaborating upon materials, learning the meaning behind something, using efficient study strategies.

Pitfall: Overconfidence in Ability

This is a result of poor metacognition and shallow understanding in material. Belief of knowing something more than what you actually do.
Increased confidence with no increase in learning.

Solution: Assessing your learning.

Assessing your learning

Knowing what you DO know and what needs to be focused on.
Figuring out how information needs to be applied.
Use of feedback to regulate what you need to know.

Ineffective Study Strategies

Less effortful study strategies, faster but not efficient enough for long-term memory.

Processing Fluency

The ease at which information is processed by the brain. (Usually misattributed to actual learning)

Desirable Difficulties

Effective strategies use a lot more effort than less effective strategies.
Provides more challenges that can result in a stronger memory.

Metacognition

knowing what you know

Under-confidence

thinking that you will do worse than what you actually will

Over-confidence

thinking that you will do better than what you actually will