Running Head: DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES

Desirable Difficulties May Enhance Learning

Raphael Portela Chalhub Rice University

DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES

The selected chapter from Psychology and the Real World focuses on the research done by Elizabeth and Robert Bjork regarding the facilitating effect of apparent impediments to learning. Recognizing the importance of practices that aid in effective learning, both professors have generally noticed that enhancing knowledge capabilities often requires going against intuition and common instructional practices. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to actual instruction is identifying whether knowledge has indeed been obtained by the individual or whether the mind has fabricated a false perception of understanding. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) The foundation of the researchers work distinguishes between performance and learning: the former is what can be observed during instruction, while the latter refers to a more permanent change to knowledge the ultimate goal of instruction. Studies have shown that learning can occur despite no observed growth in performance; contrastingly, performance can also be enhanced through practice without the presence of learning. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) A theoretical concept central to Elizabeth and Robert Bjork is the notion that conditions that most rapidly develop retrieval strength, the accessibility of memory strongly linked to performance, differ from the conditions that maximize the expansion of storage strength the relationship between memory, knowledge and skills. When one fails to favor conditions that foster improvements in storage over retrieval strength, it leads to habits that do not promote learning to its fullest. According to the experts, circumstances that apparently create difficulties, but actually lead to durable learning include varying environments of learning, distancing instruction from the blocking format, spacing study sessions, and testing. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) Changing conditions of practice impedes learning from being contextualized or only easily retrieved in a specific setting; a static arrangement results in a harder time achieving longterm storage for later situations. For instance, an experiment counter-intuitively showed that

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children who blindly practiced throwing bags at a target while varying distances outperformed the group that practiced the throws at a fixed length, despite conducting the test on both groups with solely the fixed distance throw. Other studies in addition to this one corroborate the link between condition variation and improvements in learning. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) Another practice that results in storage strength enhancement is the interleaving of instruction versus blocking. When testing is held sometime in the future, the interleaved group exhibits a greater retention of the practiced skills. For example, when participants were asked to learn mathematical formulas, a late test showed that the interleaved group outdid the blocking participants by 43% when working out problems. One of the theories argues that interleaving forces the individual to reload information, rebuilding notions and remaking connections; contrastingly, the repetitive blocking approach uses pre-existing associations making the reload of information fractional. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) A third advice relates to spacing study sessions. Similar to the relationship between interleaving and blocking, spacing fosters long-term retention while cramming supports shortterm retention. Such statement has been corroborated in a series of different scenarios, tested in both humans and animals and is a strongly accepted notion with regard to learning and memory research. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) The last beneficial system of learning suggests prioritizing tests over presentations. In other words, storage strength is enhanced when the individual is forced to generate a solution rather than merely being presented one. Unfortunately, the common notion that our memories work as a recorders leads to study practices that favor regurgitating what is given. Coupled with the idea that tests are assessment tools and not learning opportunities, this technique is rarely employed despite not only informing whether a student has understood a concept, but also

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increasing the effectiveness of future learning even when wrong solutions are generated. (Bjork & Bjork, 2009) Although none of four presented techniques are intuitive at first glance, one of them definitely strikes as excessively odd relative to the others: generating a wrong solution is significantly more effective in the long run than reading material over and over again. To help further understand this particular conclusion, one must refer to the paper Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts Enhance Subsequent Learning, where the results of experiments revealed that wrong efforts to answer questions lead to knowledge improvement. (Kornell, Matthew & Robert, 2009) The investigation is based on the notion that active involvement in learning creates lasting memories; because attempting to answer a question, despite providing a false response, is more dynamic than being provided with the correct information, the storage strength of the circumstance is stronger resulting in superior overall learning. (Kornell, Matthew & Robert, 2009) The conducted research performed six different tests. All experiments consisted of a study, a delay and a test phase. In the study phase, two formats were verified: the read-only condition presented the question and the answer together, while the test condition presented the question alone for several seconds so that the individuals could attempt to retrieve the answer before it was revealed seconds later. In experiment 1 and 2, participants were asked fictional questions; because these had fabricated answers, prior knowledge of participants could not affect the results, and instead all learning had to be obtained during the study phase. In experiments 3 through 6, participants were shown a cue word (e.g., pond) and asked to guess a weak associate (e.g., frog). (Kornell, Matthew & Robert, 2009)

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The results obtained from this set of tests led to a couple of conclusions. First, there is no doubt that failed attempts to recover information accompanied by feedback enriched learning in general. Nevertheless, in experiments 1 and 2, the learning improvement was not significantly different when comparing unsuccessful retrievals to the read-only condition. On the other hand, results from experiments 3 through 6 pointed out that the test condition with unsuccessful retrieval attempts outperformed the read-only participants. Furthermore, questions answered inaccurately by the individuals were more likely to be corrected in the last trial, experiment 6, relative to problems omitted by the same participants. (Kornell, Matthew & Robert, 2009) These discoveries clash with the pre-established belief that producing erroneous responses hampers learning; in fact, quite the opposite effect is observed. Although the findings do not imply that successful and unsuccessful tests are equally effective, the bottom line is that testing even when resulting in retrieval failure is more effective of a learning technique than presenting the question and solution simultaneously as stated earlier and corroborated in this supplementary paper. (Kornell, Matthew & Robert, 2009) Despite the discoveries presented above, the researchers have failed to further evaluate some important limitations of their experiments. First, it seems like the number of tested participants 25 UCLA students for experiment 1 and 15 UCLA undergraduates for experiment 2, for example is a small sample to test and is thus easily susceptible to differences in the individuals composing the read-only and test conditions. In order to ensure the similarity of the groups components, one would strongly encourage some sort of control experiment or evaluative data that helps prove the cerebral resemblance of the selected participants, crucial especially for experiments 3 through 6 where intellect can influence outcomes. A possible

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solution to the experiments reliability would be to perform a similar format test with different questions at a later date while reversing the groups conditions. According to the presented information so far, one might mistakenly perceive testing as a flawless technique to help learners improve their skills. However, that is not the case since there are indeed setbacks to the testing approach as discussed in the paper The cost and benefits of testing text materials. Although testing does seem to improve the later retrieval of information, a problem with the format is a possible effect known as retrieval induced forgetting. The idea behind this potential hindrance is that when information is obtained through recovery, there is a significant likelihood that other associated information will be linked to the targeted material, interfering with the process. For example, recalling that Brazil has a rainforest the desired information might spark unwanted data regarding Brazils beaches and samba music inducing forgetfulness. (Little, Storm and Bjork, 2011) Four different experiments were carried out in order to identify conditions where such unwanted effect was observed. Results identified two main factors triggering this interference: the coherence of the material and the competitiveness of the recovery practice. Part of the experiment resulted in conclusions that differed from some literature discoveries due to dissimilar conditions; according to different sources and to different experiments described in the paper, a coherent text will usually foster less forgetting although sometimes less-coherent reading will force active engagement that enhances the learning experience. (Little, Storm and Bjork, 2011) Regardless, the general findings of the paper pointed to less forgetting when integration of study items occurred, leading usually to related untested information not competing during retrieval practice of material. However, the applicability of such conclusions can become quite

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intricate once it does not seem challenging to have professors distribute only the tested portion of the material in a coherent manner relative to the remaining text. Instead, the best approach is to create texts that promote integration with other information in order to impede competition between materials and ensure that the retrieval induced forgetting does not interfere with the learning process. In summary, if practiced and unpracticed data is unified in presentation, unpracticed information will possibly conflict less with the retrieval of practiced information, thus reducing the likelihood of forgetting. (Little, Storm and Bjork, 2011) In spite of the conducted trials, the results presented by the paper do not seem quite robust. The strongest evidence is that experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that coherent text reduces retrieval induced forgetting, while experiments 3 and 4 suggest the exact opposite. Although this diverging result is explained by hypothesizing that the coherent text does not promote integration between tested and untested information, no trial is designed to corroborate such proposition. Literature is indeed used to back up the statement, but a better approach to discern the applicability of the proposed explanation, especially when it is present in half of the conducted experiments, would be to present group with a coherent text followed by integrative and competitive testing. After compiling all of these procedures together, it is clear that many students adopt learning habits that are not optimal. Instead of treating your mind as an absorbing sponge, it is important to exercise it by exposing yourself to circumstances that require different, spaced out, non-repetitive and test-format practice.

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Works Cited

Bjork, E.L., & Bjork, R.A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In M.A. Gernsbacher, R.W. Pew, L.M Hough, & J.R. Pomerantz (Eds.), Psychology and the real world (pp. 56-64). New York, NY: Worth Publishers. Kornell, N., Matthew, J. H., & Bjork, R. A. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 35(4), 989-998. doi: 10.1037/a0015729 Little, J. L., Storm, B. C., & Bjork, E. L. (2011). The costs and benets of testing text materials. Memory,19(4), 346-359. Retrieved from http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/Little_Storm_ElBjork_2011.pdf