Learning with hints is bad for your long term remembering, even in monkeys
Summary
- Training with hints does not produce better learning.
- Training without hints is slow, and initially results in more mistakes, but in the long run results in better remembering
Details
- This even works in monkeys, as shown by a study done by Nate Kornell, University of California
- The monkeys did much better in the training session with hints, but much worse in the exam day. Whereas monkeys that had no hints did worse during training but much better during the exam
References
Quotes
The overall experiment results went like this: the more hints that were available during training, the better the monkeys performed during early practice, and the worse they performed on test day. For the lists that Macduff spent three days practicing with automatic hints, he got zero correct. It was as if the pair had suddenly unlearned every list that they practiced with hints. The study conclusion was simple: “training with hints did not produce any lasting learning.”
Training without hints is slow and error-ridden. It is, essentially, what we normally think of as testing, except for the purpose of learning rather than evaluation—when “test” becomes a dreaded four-letter word. The eighth-grade math teacher was essentially testing her students in class, but she was facilitating or outright giving them the answers.
Used for learning, testing, including self-testing, is a very desirable difficulty. Even testing prior to studying works, at the point when wrong answers are assured. In one of Kornell’s experiments, participants were made to learn pairs of words and later tested on recall. At test time, they did the best with pairs that they learned via practice quizzes, even if they had gotten the answers on those quizzes wrong. Struggling to retrieve information primes the brain for subsequent learning, even when the retrieval itself is unsuccessful. The struggle is real, and really useful. “Like life,” Kornell and team wrote, “retrieval is all about the journey
Iowa State researchers read people lists of words, and then asked for each list to be recited back either right away, after fifteen seconds of rehearsal, or after fifteen seconds of doing very simple math problems that prevented rehearsal. The subjects who were allowed to reproduce the lists right after hearing them did the best. Those who had fifteen seconds to rehearse before reciting came in second. The group distracted with math problems finished last. Later, when everyone thought they were finished, they were all surprised with a pop quiz: write down every word you can recall from the lists. Suddenly, the worst group became the best. Short-term rehearsal gave purely short-term benefits. Struggling to hold on to information and then recall it had helped the group distracted by math problems transfer the information from short-term to long-term memory. The group with more and immediate rehearsal opportunity recalled nearly nothing on the pop quiz. Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle.
If you are doing too well when you test yourself, the simple antidote is to wait longer before practicing the same material again, so that the test will be more difficult when you do. Frustration is not a sign you are not learning, but ease is.