Sublime

when it comes to chunking—and to our memory more broadly—what we already know determines what we’re able to learn.

Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.

But if we stop thinking of testing as a dipstick to measure learning—if we think of it as practicing retrieval of learning from memory rather than “testing,” we open ourselves to another possibility: the use of testing as a tool for learning.

Spaced and interleaved exposure characterizes most of humans’ normal experience. It’s a good way to learn, because this type of exposure strengthens the skills of discrimination—the process of noticing particulars (a turtle comes up for air but a fish doesn’t)—and of induction: surmising the general rule (fish can breathe in water).

The process of this New Method of Decomposition and Recomposition is as follows:—Find the shortest sentence or phrase that makes sense in the sentence to be memorised. Add to this short sentence or phrase, modifiers found in the original sentence, always italicising each new addition—one at a time—until the original sentence is finally restored.

We can hold a maximum of seven things in our head at the same time, plus/minus two (Miller 1956).

One of the leading researchers in this area is Donna Rose Addis, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and Aging and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto. Her work has redefined the function of episodic memory as being ‘primarily future-focused’, and she recently discovered that some parts of the hippoc

Buzan believes schools go about teaching all wrong. They pour vast amounts of information into students’ heads, but don’t teach them how to retain it.

reading is difficult, it’s best to pause and try to recall after each page of what you’re reading.