Learning is the process by which someone acquires new knowledge, skills, or behaviors. Learning occurs as part of education, training or personal development and occurs over time procedurally. There are many different types of learning such as conditioning/association, rote memorization, and Learning is a crucial part of self improvement because it is ultimately the process by which someone changes themselves. This post will mostly discuss learning in terms of the acquirement of knowledge.
Learning Process
Memory
Memory is the most essential component of an individual learning something. Memory involves encoding, storing, and retrieving information in the brain. Memory is split into categories based on how quickly these processes are carried out. Working memory involves carrying out encoding, storage and retrieval very quickly such as remembering the last sentence and how it relates to the current one you are reading. Things that are part of working memory do not last very long without rehearsal. Short term memory involves retrieving information that you recently had access to but don’t currently have. An example of this would be reciting a phone number you heard a minute ago. Short term memory usually requires you to rehearse the information a few times in succession. Long term memory involves being able to retrieve information from a long time ago. This usually requires rehearsal of that information over multiple time periods.
Association
Association is a part of learning where things are connected to one another. One example of association occurs in classical conditioning where a visual or auditory stimulus is paired with an unconditioned response to another stimulus. This is shown in Pavlov’s experiments where the delivery of food to a dog was accompanied by a ringing bell. The dog would salivate as an unconditioned response to the food but after some time would begin to salivate as conditioned response if the bell was rung without the delivery of food. Over time though the conditioned salivating from the bell would stop if food was no longer delivered in tandem with the bell. Association also happens when trying to remember something. For example remembering the last time you went to a store will lead you to remembering what you bought, how much you spent etc. So through association remembering one piece of information can lead to the retrieval of much more information.
Methods for Learning Knowledge Effectively
Spacing Effect
The spacing effect is a phenomenon observed in humans where humans are more easily able to remember something when they study it in multiple short sessions in comparison to one long session. This means that if someone dedicates three hours to trying to learn something they will more effectively learn it if they study in three single hour sessions as opposed to a single three hour study session. This is mainly due to the serial position effect where people remember the items closer to the beginning or end of a study session leaving things in the middle of the session more likely to be forgotten. So if a study session is shorter than everything studied will be closer to the beginning or end of the study session since there is less “middle time”. As a general rule 45 minutes to an hour is the longest a study session should last and anything that requires more than that amount of time should be split into multiple sessions separated by at least 15 minutes.
Forgetting Curve
The forgetting curve refers to the decline of memory retention of something over time when there is no active attempt to retain memory. After rehearsing the decline in memory retention slows down allowing the person to retain the information for a longer period of time. This shows that after each rehearsal information is retained for a longer period so rehearsal is required after longer periods of time. Exploitation of this process is called “spaced repetition”. There is a lot of spaced repetition software on the internet. The software I have found best for myself is “Anki”.
Testing Effect
The testing effect is where memory is retained more for something when you test to see if you can retrieve it as opposed to just relearning it. For example if you were to answer a question regarding the information you were trying to remember, you would retain that information longer than if you had simply reread the information. In practice this means question/answer type flash cards are more effective way to study than reading over notes.
Association
As discussed in the previous section, using association you can retrieve a lot of information by only needing to retain a smaller amount. One way to use association to be able to retrieve larger amounts of information while retaining smaller amounts is with mnemonics. Mnemonics can come in many forms such as through music (ABC song), or sentences (“Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” for the arithmetic order of operations Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, addition, subtraction). However one disadvantage of using mnemonics is that retrieving information takes more time to do since you must first retrieve the mnemonic before retrieving the information.
External Factors that Affect Learning
In addition to the techniques described in the previous section there are many factors not related to how you learn that nonetheless affect quality of your learning.
Physical Factors
One of the biggest factors affecting how well you learn is if you are getting good sleep. Sleep is an important for adequate brain function so improving your sleep can benefit learning ability. Another important factor is fitness since good health also positively affects brain function. Diet also plays a role in how well you learn with hydration and omega-3 fatty acids being especially effective.
Mental Factors
One of the biggest mental factors affecting how well you learn is motivation. The most consistent way to motivate yourself to learn is to figure how what you are going to learn is useful or necessary. Another important mental factor is metacognition which is the process of understanding how you understand something. For example if you find something new you learn makes sense try to articulate specifically why it makes sense to you. How you view the environment you are learning in is also important to how well you learn. For example if you are trying to study in the same place where you casually browse the internet you will likely feel tempted to browse the internet instead.
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