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Hi, I’m Dr. Stephen Chew.
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I’m a professor of psychology here at Samford
University in Birmingham, Alabama.
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This is the second in a series of five videos
on how to study effectively in college.
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In the first video we examined some basic
beliefs that can undermine your learning.
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In this video, I’ll explain some basic principles
of how people learn and how you can use those
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principles to improve the effectiveness of
your study.
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Let’s start by examining how accurate your
understanding is of how people learn.
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Take a look at the following statements.
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Pick the one that represents the most important
factor in successful learning.
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Only one is correct.
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In order to find out the correct one, I want
you to imagine you are in a classic psychology
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experiment by Thomas Hyde and James Jenkins
from 1969 and see if you can guess the results.
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The basic design of their study is shown here,
with 5 different groups of participants.
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Each group of participants was presented with
a list of 24 words.
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The instructions the participants were given
about what to do with the words varied from
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group to group.
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Once all the words were presented, everyone
had to try to recall them from memory.
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Hyde and Jenkins looked at the impact of two
variables on learning.
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The first one, on the left, is whether or
not you knew you are going have to recall
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the words after all of them were presented.
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If you were in one of the two groups in the
Intentional condition, you were forewarned
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that you would have to recall the words after
they were all presented.
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If you were in one of the two groups in the
Incidental condition, you weren’t forewarned
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about the recall test.
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It’s like taking a surprise pop quiz.
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Any learning that occurred was incidental.
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The other variable Hyde and Jenkins looked
at was how participants rehearsed or encoded
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words, what became known later as “levels
of processing.”
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Two groups had to listen to the words and
check whether or not it had the letter “e”
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in the spelling.
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The other two groups had to rate whether or
not they found the word pleasant.
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Now, why would this make a difference?
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If you are checking for “E”s, then you
are focusing on the spelling of the word,
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which is called shallow level of processing.
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If you are rating its pleasantness, you are
thinking about the meaning of the words related
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to your own experience.
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That is called deep level processing.
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So, say the word in the list is “dance”.
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If you were in the Intentional condition,
you knew you will be asked later to recall
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[that word].
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If you were in the Incidental condition, you
haven’t a clue about the recall test.
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In the other variable, if you are in the “E”
checking group, you think about the spelling
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and mark down “yes”.
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If you are in the pleasantness group, you
think about dance and check “yes” if you
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like dance and “no” if you don’t.
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The two variables combine to give you four
different groups.
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There was a fifth group just told to memorize
the words as best they could.
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The list of 24 words was presented one word
at a time, and each group carried out its
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instructions.
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Afterward, all the participants were asked
to recall as many of the 24 words as they
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could.
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Who do you think recalled the most words?
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Let’s look at the results and see what happened
and see what it says about learning.
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The average percent recall is shown on the
y-axis.
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First, did the intent to learn matter?
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If it did, then the Intentional learning groups
should do better than the Incidental Learning
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groups.
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But they did not.
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Intent to learn had no effect at all.
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Now, look at level of processing.
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If level of processing matters, then deep
processing, rating pleasantness, should recall
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more than shallow processing, checking for
E’s.
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You see the deep processing groups recalled
a lot more than the shallow processing groups
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regardless of whether they were intending
to learn or not.
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Now there are two key points here.
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First, people who use deep processing learned
the material whether they intended to or not.
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On the other hand, the people who used shallow
strategy, even if they wanted to learn, they
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did not learn.
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Second, people who processed words at a deep
level, even if they weren’t trying to learn,
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remembered them just as well as that control
group who were doing their best to learn.
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So, the depth of processing matters and the
intention to learn doesn’t.
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You can have every intention to learn, but
if you use a shallow strategy, you won’t
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learn.
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Let me say a little bit more about the Levels
of Processing because it is a powerful idea
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for student learning.
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Levels of processing says that memory is composed
of a continuum of levels from shallow to deep.
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Shallow levels involve studying meaningless,
superficial properties of what you are trying
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to learn, like mindless re-reading or memorization.
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The deepest levels of processing involve thinking
about material meaningfully, interpreting
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the information and relating it to your prior
knowledge or experience, or creating a mental
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image of the information.
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Deeper processing leads to better recall.
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You also have to understand the idea of orienting
tasks.
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Orienting tasks make people process information
at a certain level of processing.
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Orienting tasks make people process information
at a certain depth.
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In this case, checking for E’s is a shallow
orienting task, making people process words
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at a shallow level.
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Rating a word’s pleasantness is a deep orienting
task, causing people to think about the meaning
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of the words, process them deeply, and thus
learn the words.
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Now let’s return to the question of the
single most important factor in learning.
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We can rule out number 1 because we just saw
that intention and desire to learn are not
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important.
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Number 2 is also not correct.
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In the study, both groups paid close attention
to the words to do their orienting task.
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Attention is not enough to guarantee learning.
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What about Number 3?
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You hear a lot about learning styles.
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Some people are visual learners; others are
auditory or kinesthetic learners.
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There is simply no good research evidence
that supports the validity of learning styles,
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so forget about them.
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Besides, if you plan to be successful, you
should become good at learning in multiple
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ways.
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What about number 4?
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I did make a big deal about committing enough
time to be successful.
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But time alone is not sufficient for successful
learning.
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That leaves number 5, which is correct.
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It relates to depth of processing.
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If you read a text without comprehension,
or if you memorize definitions without really
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understanding them, you are using shallow
processing and you will not learn.
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If you think about meaningful connections,
you are using deep processing, and you will
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learn whether you intend to or not.
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If you picked incorrectly, don’t feel bad.
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Most people get this wrong.
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If you picked correctly, congratulations.
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You are on the right path to successful study.
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So, let’s summarize what we have learned
in the first two videos.
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Here are the factors which don’t help or
even hurt your learning.
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Now I’m not saying that desire to learn,
attention or engagement are bad things, but
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deep processing is the crucial element.
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A lot of students want to learn, but they
use shallow strategies, and they don’t learn.
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Now here are the factors, which do contribute
to your academic success.
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So how do we go about processing information
deeply and developing a connected understanding
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of material?
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That is the focus of the next two videos.
