M2 Analogies

Octopus of Attention that slips its tentacles through the 4 slots of working memory when necessary to help you make connections to information that you might have in various parts of your brain.

Octopus basically locks in during focused thinking. Focused thinking is often what gets you started in creating a chunk.

When you're stressed, your attentional octopus begins to lose the ability to make some of those connections.

When you get dressed in the morning, you think one simple thought like, "I'll get dressed.", but it's amazing when you realize the complex swirl of underlying activities that take place with that one, simple chunk of thought.

Once you chunk an idea, a concept, or an action, you don't need to remember all the little underlying details. You've got the main idea, the chunk, and that's enough.

Listening to a song before trying to play the song yourself.

When you're first trying to understand how to work a problem, you have heavy cognitive load. So, it helps to start with a work-through example.

Cookie Cutter

The "Just do as you're told", mindless approach, when following a work-through example. This is not what a work-through example is.

A roadmap to help you when traveling to a new place.

Pay attention to what's going on around you when you're using the map and soon you'll find yourself able to get there on your own. You'll even be able to find out new ways of getting there.

Work-through examples.

Your octopus tentacles, so to speak, can't reach very well if some of them are off on other thoughts using up some the limiting slots in your working memory.

It's best to give your undivided attention to the information you want to chunk.

The superglue that helps hold the underlying memory traces together.

Understanding.

Just looking at someone else's painting doesn't mean you could actually create that painting yourself. And just hearing a song won't give you the expertise you need to sing it in the same resonant fashion.

You have to do it yourself to learn. Only doing it yourself helps create the neural patterns that underlie true mastery.

Having a tool in your strategy solving toolbox but not knowing when to use that tool.

Learning something but lacking context, not knowing when to use it.

Building off of the bigger pieces of a puzzle (Imagine a puzzle of a car but only the wheels and window are the only pieces solved).

Learn the major concepts or points first, these are often the key parts of a good instructor or on book chapters, outline, flow charts, tables or concept maps.

One you have this done, fill in the details. Even if a few puzzle pieces are missing at the end of your studies, you can still see the big picture.

Little neural hooks, that we can hand our thinking on.

The recall process.

Trying to learn the advanced strategy in chess, before you even understand the basic concept of how the pieces move.

Students thought that concept mapping and drawing diagrams that show the relationship between the concepts would be the better than recall. But, if you're trying to build connections between chunks, before the basic chunks are embedded in the brain, it doesn't work as well.

A hyperlink that's been connected to a great big webpage.

A slot in working memory.

Collection or library of neural patterns

Concepts and solutions internalized as chunked patterns.

As you build each chunk it is filling in a part of a larger puzzle, but if you don't practice with your growing chunks, the puzzle pieces can remain faint and it's harder to put together the big picture of what you're trying to learn.

Puzzle pieces and connecting learning.

One step at a time.

Sequential thinking which involves the focused mode.

A giant leap.

Holistic thinking which involves the diffuse mode.

Tents that can pop up in different places on a tarp.

Metaphors. They can be surprisingly different from one another even though they talk about the same concept. Different metaphors hold the tent up at different places.

A pinball machine with tightly placed bumpers that prevent you from discovering a new or better idea. The crowded bumpers of the focus mode and the previous patterns that you've built, can create a sort of rut that prevents you from springing to a new place where the solution might be found.

Describing the phenomenon of Einstellung.

Installing a roadblock because of the way you were initially looking at something.

Another Einstellung analogy.