Expanding Retrieval Practice for Preschoolers
By Megan SumerackiToday’s post features a set of experiments conducted by Catherine Fritz and colleagues (1) with preschool children. We have actually cited this paper a few times on our blog, when we covered why the spacing effect has failed to make it into mainstream practice (Part 1, Part 2), and when I wrote about…
Interleaving: A Classroom Experiment
The learning phase took place over 9 weeks in the classroom. During this time, the students received their normal lessons and assignments. There were four different types of problems that were a part of the experiment, and the students’ assignments were constructed so that across the nine weeks they saw 12 different problems of each…
Digest #156: Learning (More) About Neurodiversity
By Megan SumerackiI have been learning a lot about neurodiversity and the way we think about divergence vs. disorders. I have appreciated learning about these areas so much, and have appreciated the opportunities to hear experts and those who have experience with neurodiversity (many different types of experiences!) discuss these issues. For example, our most…
Catering to Learning Styles Isn’t Just Ineffective: It Can Harm Learning
And the latter is exactly what they found. When they looked at the results of Experiment 2, learning style no longer mattered. Strategy mattered. The way they students studied mattered. When their study strategy (verbalizing landmarks or visually drawing them) matched the way they were assessed (either on their verbal recognition of landmarks or their…
Retrieval Practice and Processing Load
The ExperimentsIn both Experiments 1 and 2, Hungarian undergraduate students learned randomly paired Hungarian-Swahili word pairs. Using word pairs allowed the researchers to present multiple discrete trials (40 pairs in total) and to be able to clearly determine students’ accuracy on each trial. This is particularly important with physiological data, like pupillometry. Randomly pairing the…
Unlearning Neuromyths
References:(1) Macdonald, K., Germine, L., Anderson, A., Christodoulou, J., & McGrath, L. M. (2017). Dispelling the myth: raining in education or neuroscience decreases but does not eliminate beliefs in neuromyths. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1314.(2) Lithander, M. P., Geraci, L., Karaca, M., & Rydberg, J. (2021). Correcting neuromyths: A comparison of different types of refutations.…
How Much do Babies Really Learn from Videos?
How much did the babies learn? The babies who watched the video, either alone or with a parent, did not learn any more new words than those in the control condition without any intervention, despite watching the video 20 times over the course of a month. This means that the video did not teach the…
Encouraging Students to Adopt Effective Learning Strategies
“Before you begin, we wanted to tell you about a strategy that is extremely effective for learning: repeatedly self-testing. Research shows that people learn more from repeated testing than from repeated studying. This is illustrated in the Figure to the right which shows differences in final memory performance for Purdue students who repeatedly studied information…
Learning from Video: A Review of the Literature in Higher Ed
References:(1) Noetel, M., Griffith, S., Delaney, O., Sanders, T., Parker, P., del Pozo Cruz, B., & Lonsdale, C. (2021). Video improves learning in higher education: A systematic review. Review of Educational Research, 91(2), 204-236.(2) Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American psychologist, 63(8), 760.
Is Critical Thinking a Soft Skill?
As with most things, the state vs trait debate is nuanced. I don’t think any personality psychologist would claim that personality is entirely state-based or entirely-trait-based. Instead, it’s somewhere in between. You may have general tendencies, but find yourself thinking, feeling, and behaving differently depending on the context. While you may tend to be shy…
