M2 Chunking

What is a chunk?

Compact packages of information that your mind can easily access.

________ is the mental leap that helps you unite bits of information together through meaning.

Chunking; the new logical whole makes the chunk easier to remember, and also makes it easier to fit the chunk into the larger picture of what you're learning.

Just memorizing a fact without understanding or context doesn't help you understand what's really going on or how to concepts fit together with other concepts you're learning. That's why your brain doesn't seem to work when you're angry, stressed, or afraid.

One of the best ways to learn a language is the rote focus mode, ________ ___ ________. Along with more diffuse-like ____ ______ ____ ______ ________.

learning the language; free speech with native speakers.

Small Chunks can become

larger.

All the expertise serves to underpin more creative interpretations as you gradually become a master of the material.

When trying to build a chunk, it helps to

grasp and master various bits and pieces of the skills you need. You're creating little neural mini chunks that you can then knit together into larger neural chunks.

Later, you can knit those larger chunks into even larger and complex chunks that you can draw up in an instant.

The best chunks are the ones that are

so well ingrained that you don't even have to consciously think about connecting the neural pattern together. That is actually the point of making complex ideas, movements, or reactions in a single chunk.

When looking at a work through-example, your job is to figure out

why the steps are taken the way they are (what is the point of each step). They can help you see the key features and underlying principles of a problem.

One concern about using work-through examples to help you start forming chunks, is that

it can be all too easy to focus too much on why an individual step works and not on the connection between the steps.

The first step of chunking is to

focus your undivided attention on the information you want to chunk.

If you had the television going on in the background or you're looking up every few minutes to check or answer your phone or computer messages, it means you're going to have more difficulty in making a chunk, because your brain is not really focusing on chunking the new material.

The second step of chunking is to

understand the basic idea you're trying to chunk. Ex. Understanding the concept, seeing the connections between the basic elements, grasping the principle, comprehending the essence.

Student can often synthesize the gist, that is figure out the main idea or ideas pretty naturally, or at least they can grasp those ideas if they allow the focused and diffuse modes of thinking to take turns in helping them figure out what's going on.

Can you create a chunk if you don't understand?

Yes, but it's often a useless chunk that won't fit in with or relate to other material you're learning.

Does just understanding how a problem was solved create a chunk that you can easily call to mind later?

Not necessarily, don't confuse the "aha!" of a breakthrough and understanding with solid expertise.

That's part of why you can grasp an idea when a teacher presents in class, but if you don't review it fairly soon after you first learned it, it can seem incomprehensible when it comes time to prepare for a test.

Closing the book and testing yourself on whether you can solve the problem you think you understand will _____ __ your learning at this stage.

speed up; You often realize the first time you actually understand something, is when you can actually do it yourself.

The third step to chunking is to

gain context, so you can see not just how, but also when to use this chunk. Context means going beyond the initial problem and seeing more broadly, repeating and practicing with both related and unrelated problems, so you can see not only when to use the chunk but when not to use it.

Ex. Doing a rapid 2-minute picture walk through a chapter in a book before you begin studying it, glancing at pictures and section heading can allow you to gain a sense of the big picture, so you can listen to a very well-organized lecture.

Ultimately, ________ helps you broaden the networks of neurons that are connected to your chunk, ensuring it's not only ____ but also __________ from many different paths.

practice; firm; accessible.

Learning takes place in 2 ways.

Bottom-up learning (chunking) and top-down learning (the big picture). Both processes are vital in gaining mastery over the material.

Bottom-up learning (chunking)

There's a bottom-up chunking process where practice and repetition can help you both build and strengthen each chunk, so you can easily access it whenever you need to.

Top-down learning (the big picture)

There's a top-down big picture process that allows you to see what you're learning and where it fits in.

_______ is where bottom-up and top-down learning meet.

Context

So the essential steps in building a chunk are

1. Focused Attention

2. Understanding

3. Practice

One of the most common approaches for trying to learn new material from a book or from notes is to simply reread it. But psychologist, Jeffrey Karpicke, has shown that this approach is actually much less productive than another, ______.

Recall. After you've read from the material, simply look away, and see what you can recall from the material you've just read. When we retrieve knowledge, we're not just being mindless robots, the retrieval process itself enhances deep learning and helps us to begin forming chunks.

The only time rereading seems effective, is if you

let time pass between the reading, so that it becomes more of an exercise in spaced repetition.

As we know, there are 4 slots in working memory. When you're first learning how to understand a concept, or technique to solve a problem,

your entire working memory is involved in the process. As you begin to chunk the concept, you will feel it connecting more easily and smoothly in your mind. Once the concept is chunked it becomes only one slot of working memory. It simultaneously becomes one smooth strand that's easy to follow and to use to make new connections. The rest of your working memory is left clear.

If you just look at a solution, for example, then tell yourself, "Oh yeah, I see why they did that.", then the solution

is not really yours. You've done almost nothing to knit those concepts into your own underlying neural circuitry. Merely glancing at a solution and thinking you truly know it yourself is one of the most common illusions of competence in learning. You must have the information persisting in your memory if you want to gain that competence and think creatively with it. So, if you're just rereading the book in front of you or using google, you're just deluding yourself.

Other things that can give you an illusion of competence in learning.

Highlighting and underlining must be done very carefully. Otherwise, it can not only be ineffective but also misleading. Making lots of movement with your hand can fool you into thinking you've placed the concept in your brain.

If you do markup the text, try to look for main ideas before making any marks, and try to keep your underlining and highlighting to a minimum. One sentence or less per paragraph.

On the other hand, words or notes in a margin that synthesizes key concepts are a very good idea.

This is a reminder that just wanting to learn the material, and spending a lot of time with it,

doesn't mean you'll actually learn it. A super helpful way to make sure you're learning and not fooling yourself with illusions of competence, is to test yourself on whatever you're learning. In some sense, that's what recall is actually doing. Allowing you to see whether or not you really grasp an idea.

When doing self-tests, if you make a mistake in what you're doing,

it's actually a very good thing. You want to try not to repeat your mistakes, of course, but mistakes are very valuable to make in your little self-tests before high stakes real tests. Because they allow you to make repairs in your thinking flaws. Bit by bit, mistakes help correct your thinking, so that you can learn better and do better.

Recall material, when you're outside your usual place of study,

can also help you strengthen your grasp on the material. You don't realize it, but when you are learning something new, you can often take subliminal cues from the room and space around you at the time you were originally learning the material. This can throw you off when you take tests because you often take tests in a room that's different from the room you were learning in. By recalling and thinking about the material when you're in various physical environments, you become independent of the cues from any one given location.

Acetylcholine

affects focused learning and attention.

Dopamine

signals in relation to unexpected rewards.

Serotonin

affects social life and risk-taking behavior.

In monkey troops, the alpha male has the highest serotonin activity, and the lowest ranking male has the lowest levels. The level of serotonin is also closely linked to risk taking behavior, with higher risk is lower serotonin monkeys. Inmates in jail have some of the lowest levels of serotonin in society.

What people do to enhance their knowledge and gain expertise,

is to gradually build the number of chunks in their mind, valuable bits of information they can piece together in new and creative ways.

The bigger and more well-practiced your chunked mental library,

the more easily you'll be able to solve problems and figure out solutions.

Chunks can also help you understand new concepts. This is because when you grasp one chunk, you'll find that that chunk can be related in surprising ways to similar chunks, not only in that field but also in very different fields. This idea is called

transfer.

A chunk is a way of compressing information much more compactly. As you gain more experience in chunking in any particular subject,

you'll see that the chunks your able to create are bigger, in some sense that the ribbons are longer. Not only that, but the neural patterns are in a sense darker. They're more solid and firmly ingrained. Longer and Darker.

Your diffuse mode can help you connect two or more chunks together in

new ways to solve novel problems.

Listen to the whispers from your diffuse mode because different ___________________ are ___________________________________.

solution techniques; lurking at the edge of your memory.

There are 2 ways to figure something out or to solve problems. First, through _________________________________. Second, through _________________________.

sequential, step by step reasoning; a more holistic intuition

Focused mode is more

sequential.

Diffuse mode is more

holistic. Most difficult problems and concepts are grasped through intuition, because these new ideas make a leap away from what you're familiar with.

Keep in mind that the diffuse mode's semi-random way of making connections means that the solutions it provides should be

very carefully verified using the focused mode. Intuitive insights aren't always correct.

Law of Serendipity

Lady luck favors the one who tries. You'll find that once you put that first problem or concept in your mental library, then the second concept will go in a little more easily, and the third more easily still. Not that all of this is a snap, but it does get easier.

Metaphors, as it turns out, are not just a literary device. They play a crucial role in how we understand and process new information by

linking it to information we already know. By linking these abstract concepts to the more concrete, familiar ideas in our minds, metaphors can help our brains form connections and make sense of complex topics.

The powerful language models of generative AI can help us create

vivid, memorable metaphors to explain challenging concepts.

Continuing to study or practice after you've mastered what you can in the session is called ____________.

Overlearning. Research has shown it can be a waste of valuable learning time.

The reality is, once you've got the basic idea down during a session, continuing to hammer away at it during the same session doesn't strengthen the kinds of long-term memory connections you want to have strengthened.

Overlearning can have its place when

it can produce automaticity that can be important when you're executing a serve in tennis or a perfect piano concerto. Also, if you choke on tests or public speaking, overlearning can be especially valuable. Did you know that even expert public speakers practice on the order of 70 hours for a typical 20-minute TED Talk? Automaticity can be helpful in times of nervousness but be weary of repetitive overlearning during a single session.

Repeating something you already know perfectly well is, face it,

easy. It can also bring the illusion of competence that you've mastered the full range of material, when you've only mastered the easy stuff.

You want to balance your studies by deliberately focusing on what you find more difficult. This focusing on the more difficult material is called

Deliberate Practice. It's often what makes the difference between a good student and a great student.

In this phenomenon, your initial simple thought, an idea you already have in mind, or a neural pattern you've already developed and strengthened, may prevent a better idea or solution from being found.

Einstellung.

The German word Einstellung means

mindset.

Understanding how to obtain real solutions is important in learning and in life. Mastering a subject means learning not only the basic chunks, but also how to select and use different chunks. The best way to learn that is by practicing jumping back and forth between problems and situations that require different techniques or strategies. This is called

Interleaving.

Once you have the basic idea of a technique down during your study session, start

interleaving your practice with problems of different types of approaches, concepts, and procedures.

Sometimes this can be a little tough to do, still do what you can to mix up your learning. You can also deliberately try to make yourself occasionally pick out why some problems call for one technique as opposed to the other. Teach your brain that just learning how isn't enough, you also need to know when to use it.

Interleaving your studies, making it a point to review for a test, for example, by skipping around through problems in the different chapters and materials can sometimes seem to make your learning more difficult,

but in reality, it helps you learn more deeply. Interleaving is extraordinarily important.

Although practice and repetition are important in helping build solid neural patterns to draw on,

it's interleaving that starts building flexibility and creativity. It's where you leave the world of practice and repetition, to begin thinking more independently.

When you interleave within one subject or one discipline, you begin to

develop your creative power within that discipline.

When you interleave between several subjects or disciplines, you can

easily make interesting new connections between chunks in the different fields, which can enhance your creativity even further.

Of course, it takes time to develop solid chunks of knowledge in different fields, so that may be a tradeoff.

Developing expertise in several fields means you can bring very new ideas from one field to another, but it can also mean that your expertise in one field or another

isn't quite as deep as that of the person who specializes in only one discipline. On the other hand, if you develop expertise in only one discipline, you may know it very deeply, but you may become more deeply entrenched in your familiar way of thinking and not be able to handle new ideas.

Interleaving assists with

transfer, leading to more creativity.