Hello everyone and welcome back to Seeker+!
I’m your host, Julian Huguet, and as you all know, I am someone who has a lot of different
interests…and as a result there are a lot of things I need to get done at a given time.
Most weeks I am juggling multiple projects each with their own demands and deadlines.
And something else about me—I am always trying to learn new things.
Sometimes it’s deep research into a topic for something like this podcast, or working
on my music, or building something.
And I know I’m not alone in this.
Whether you’re studying for school, learning a new language, or just trying to be more
productive with all the work you have to do… learning is a constant.
And personally I’d love to be better at it.
Learn to learn, as they say.
So I thought I’d talk about the science of how we learn things.
I’ll do some myth-busting around the whole visual versus auditory or sensory learner
thing.
I’ll explore proven methods for learning new skills faster, or remembering information
for longer periods of time.
And ultimately, go into how we all could be structuring our time to be the most productive
and efficient humans possible.
Oh, and on that note—we’ll get into toxic productivity too.
That’s important.
There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s take it from the top.
In short, learning is how we create a mental model of the world around us.
For animals, learning occurs when a personal experience results in a behavioral change.
So something happens to them and then they act differently as a result.
Not all organisms do this.
Some insects, for example, spend their lives following a set of developmental steps without
ever reacting differently to the world around them.
They may never change their behavior based on something they perceive.
They have little need to learn.
In a human example, if you were to touch a hot stove, you’d immediately pull your hand
away without much thought.
Pulling your hand away isn’t a learned behavior, it’s just a reaction.
But if in the future, you avoided touching the stove in the first place, that would be
learning.
You’re changing your behavior based on a past experience.
Learned behaviors are developed over time by organisms that need to react to a world
that was unstable and unpredictable.
Learning where predators lived and avoiding that area meant the difference between survival
and becoming lunch.
When we’re born, a lot of our learning comes easy.
Our young brains are pre-wired to learn what is known as “biologically primary material,”
This material includes things like your first language.
It’s how a toddler learns to talk without ever having to run flashcards or pull an all-nighter.
But later in life, our brains have to work harder to learn “biologically secondary
material.”
This would be things like math, writing, playing an instrument, or speaking a new language
as an adult.
The process of acquiring that secondary material is understood to happen in three steps: encoding,
storage, and retrieval.
It doesn’t really matter what you’re learning - could be the map layout of Metroid Dread
or training to become a surgeon.
You still encode, store, and retrieve.
And understanding how these steps work is how we can approach learning more effectively.
So encoding is how information is taken into your brain in the first place.
Now there are a lot of different ways that we absorb the world around us.
I won’t go into all of the clinical definitions, but we can encode by responding to different
stimuli around us, by problem solving, by repetition, by association, and more.
All of these are just categories of those individual experiences I mentioned earlier
that teach us to behave differently.
We’ll come back to the steps of storage and memory retrieval in the next episode of
this series.
But right now I want to focus on encoding and get into how we actually take in information,
both in the classroom and out.
I don’t know about you but when I was growing up, I was told that people are either visual
or auditory learners.
That you learn best either by looking at a picture or by listening to a teacher.
But lately, science has been tearing that idea apart.
The idea of different learning styles for students has been around for a while, but
it really exploded in the 90s when an teacher named Neil Fleming created something known
as the VARK Questionnaire.
He felt that if people had strong and unique preferences for things like cars, food, and
partners, maybe they have preferences for the ways that they learn too?
To answer this question, Fleming observed more than nine thousand different classes.
Man, that’s a lot of extra school for an adult to sit through.
And that’s even before you could record classes and watch a lecture on double-speed.
My attention span could never.
From his observations, Fleming made a list of questions to help students figure out what
kind of learners they are.
It is called VARK.
V for visual.
A for aural, R for read or write, and K for kinesthetic.
So it was meant to determine whether you learn better by seeing diagrams, by hearing information,
by reading or writing it, or by practicing it “hands on,”
And the questions include things like: “If you have a problem with your heart, would
you prefer that the doctor…”
A) Showed you a diagram of what was wrong B)
Described what was wrong C) Gave you something to read to explain what
was wrong Or D) Used a plastic model to show you what
was wrong?
And this perspective on learning made sense for a lot of educators.
If you could tailor your teaching method to a student’s particular learning style, wouldn’t
they learn better?
But here’s where science comes in to ask for the receipts.
In a 2018 study out of Indiana University, hundreds of students took the VARK questionnaire
to see if their results lined up with the ways they naturally liked to study.
If not, then they were given study strategies that fit their VARK learning style.
The study found that the students who did these new strategies didn’t actually do
any better on their tests.
The researchers also found that even though they were involved in this study, many students
completely ignored the techniques recommended to them based on their learning styles.
Which is like the most college thing to have happen in your carefully planned research
study.
But still.
This is evidence that learning styles don’t give students an advantage.
By the way, that paper is titled “Another Nail in the Coffin for Learning Styles,”
so they really aren’t putting up with any misinterpretations of the data.
And study after study has reached the same conclusion.
There’s no correlation between sticking to your supposed learning style and actually
performing better.
As another sassy article title put it “Learning Styles: Where’s The Evidence?”
Even Neil Fleming has backed off a bit saying in an article of his own in 2006 saying that
sometimes students and teachers invest more belief in VARK than it warrants.”
And that “Some also confuse preferences with ability or strengths.
You can like something, but be good at it or not good at it or any point between.”
One study found that learning using multiple styles can be helpful though.
So engaging with information from words and visuals may be better than dealing in words
alone.
It’s a good reason to lean into multimedia learning.
Ahem, watching Seeker videos.
All this is not to say that people learn in the same way.
There are people who think in fundamentally unique ways.
For example, people with autism or dyslexia or ADHD like me.
And that can have a big impact on how they learn.
But regardless of how best you encode information, all of this begs the question: What actually
is the best way to learn?
Which brings me to those next steps involved in learning - storage and retrieval.
This is how the brain takes the information it has absorbed and can not only hold onto
it, but pull it out and use it when the situation requires it.
So let’s get into what neuroscience has to say about optimizing learning and building
long-term memories that serve us when we really need them.
I’m talking about neuroplasticity, working memory, synapses, and how to tap into the
90% of our brain that we don’t use.
Just kidding about that last one.
That’s not real, it’s just the inciting hook of a well-known Bradley Cooper movie.
We’ll get into all of that and more in the next episode of Seeker Plus.
Thanks for tuning in!