The Surprising Truth About When - and Why It Happens

I recently read two books on the topic of learning: How We Learn by Benedict Carey (published in 2014) and Learn Better, by Ulrich Boser (published in 2017). Both books focus on techniques that have been shown through scientific experiments to improve a person’s ability to learn or remember new things. This is essentially a review and comparison of both books.

Both are good, and well-written. There is some overlap between them, and interestingly, they disagree with one another on a few points, most notably on the subject of whether learning in a quiet environment can improve learning (Boser) or whether studying while music is playing and there are a few distractions is better (Carey).

On the positive side, both books are thorough in their discussion of the various techniques they highlight, and both helpfully include an appendix summarizing those techniques. Some of the findings are a bit obvious: you learn best when you can relate it to your own life, interests or needs. Also, don’t wait until the last minute to cram, but start learning/memorizing as soon as possible. Third, planning to teach a topic to someone (or even explaining it to yourself) is an effective way of learning something in depth.

Both books also highlighted several learning techniques that I hadn’t known. One is the importance of quizzing in learning. Carey focuses on self-quizzing once you have started to learn, as a way of improving your retention (for example, it is more effective to try to repeat something back to yourself than to re-read something). Ulrich highlights pre-testing before you have begun learning as a way to alert your brain to watch for the answers to the pre-test questions. (Because Ulrich’s focus is not only for the individual but also for teachers and policy-makers, he laments that this proven technique is not being widely deployed in classrooms.) For both, the emphasis is on activing our “recall” function, not just our “save” function.

Another key learning recommendation is to mix or interleave different topics while studying or practicing. Perhaps the brain gets bored with the repetition, or perhaps doing things in a random order is a better simulation of how we will need to access information in real life. So, mix things up rather than sticking with one topic. Don’t just drill forehand, but switch from forehand to backhand to lob in quick succession. And use a much larger set of flashcards, to keep your brain awake and to increase retention time.

Retention time and refreshing was another fascinating topic. We all have discovered that if we don’t use it periodically, we lose it. But how often do we need to remind ourselves of something in order to keep the information accessible in our brains? Carey includes an excellent discussion on the scientific research that has been done on the topic of spacing out our learning, and apparently there are even apps now (e.g., SuperMemo) that will remind us of something at the precise intervals we need before we will forget it. (Briefly, it appears that we need to repeat something more frequently when we are first learning it, and then we can let it go for longer intervals. Search on “Forgetting Curve” and Ebbinghaus for details.) I also found Carey’s discussion on sleep and its importance in knowledge retention was especially informative and helpful.

Another important point they both make is that knowledge itself is important – and this surprised me a bit. I had previously concluded that in the Internet age, we can always look up what we need to know, so why try to memorize or learn anything? But both authors emphasize that we need a mental framework – or some sort of previous understanding – on which to hang new information. Possibly for some topics this is obvious: it’s clear we can’t understand calculus until we have mastered a good bit of previous math, and we struggle sometimes with current events (think Central America or the Middle East) unless we have learned something of the history. What I realized from these books was that this also applies to most topics. Getting knowledge into our own heads is still important for learning.

One thing that neither book did well was distinguish between types of learning. The word “learning” can mean many things, from finding out about something (“we learned today that the next Olympics will be held in Tokyo”) to rote memorization (e.g., the times table, definitions for a set of foreign-language vocabulary words) to gaining understanding (e.g., what multiplication means and how it works, how a foreign language is structured) to learning how to do something (tennis, Spanish guitar, public speaking). (And perhaps there is a special category for what I keep hoping to learn, namely how to remember positive parenting techniques when my child has pushed all my buttons.) Possibly the authors believe that all the techniques apply equally well to all these types of learning, but if so, a brief discussion of this would have been helpful. Carey’s book addresses the question of why we may fail a test when we had previously though we knew the material (the illusion of fluency, and study aids such as highlighting which make us think we know something better than we actually do). But I believe neither author took on the topic of test anxiety.

One of the books – Boser’s, I believe – did note that one common learning theory has actually been debunked. Some theories hold that individuals have different learning styles, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, but these theories appear to have no scientific basis, which was definitely news to me. It appears it may be new to many people, since this concept has permeated many academic institutions.
I also found it curious that neither of the authors mentioned the techniques popularized in The Memory Book, a best-selling book by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas from the 1970s. Although that book clearly is focused primarily on the memorization end of the learning spectrum, I have found that book’s basic technique of using silly mental images as a way to keep things in mind to be an enduringly useful approach for memorization since I first read it (decades ago!). It was a best-seller in its day and I believe has never been out of print, so I was surprised that neither of these authors referenced it or its various memorization techniques. And although both books are clearly intended to focus primarily on the learner’s role, I also was surprised that neither highlights or even mentions the role of the teacher or coach in learning’s effectiveness: surely some of our learning is a product of how good a teacher or coach we might have.

In terms of distinguishing between the books, I generally felt that Carey’s book went into greater depth on a fewer number of topics, while Boser’s book covered a larger number of techniques, and at a reasonable level of depth. And although I recommend both books, there is a fair amount of commonality between them. Which you might prefer may depend on your objective. Boser’s book is probably the more thorough of the two (certainly it is longer and covers more techniques), and includes some helpful appendices that summarize the ideas for different audiences (Learners, Parents & Teachers, and Policy Makers). However, the structure of his book is less clear, and less easy to use when looking back through it to find information. I felt like there were a lot of good nuggets in there, but I sometimes had trouble teasing out exactly what they were. Carey’s book, on the other hand, might be slightly more readable (and his Table of Contents is definitely more helpful), and if I were choosing a book for a more general or a younger audience (say high school), I would go for Carey’s. Either or both are worth reading.

How We Learn is an enjoyable enough book that doesn't have nearly as much to do with learning as it does memorization. The majority of the studies cited in this book have to do with memorizing what is largely random data that is not necessarily of use in real life. There are a number of practical pieces of advice for studying and retaining (any type of) information, but honestly, these could have been easily summarized in just a few pages. Just as often, these studies leave us with more questions than answers and in no case do the people conducting the studies have any evidence proving WHY some methods of study lead to better memory retention than others. There are a lot of theories in the book, but at this chapter in human history the brain is so little understood that most theories on memory retention are hardly better than educated guesses.

What this book is NOT is a step-by-step, how-to manual on how to learn more effectively. The process of learning is a lot different than just memorizing facts, although you probably wouldn't know that from taking a look at this country's horrible education system. I did enjoy reading the information that was in the book. It did have a few useful tips and some facts about memorization that I had not know about previously. It definitely was not what I was expecting based upon its title, description or many of the reviews I have read here though.

This book was just ok. The title is pretty deceiving. "Surprising truth about". It's the same line on Daniel H. Pink's Drive book "Surprising Truth about..." Basically, book titles are sounding more now like Clickbaity Buzzfeed articles that are meant to draw people away from Facebook and into a very shallow listicle mostly drawn from an askreddit thread. Ok, end rant.

This book should actually be called something like "How to apply some interesting bits from recent learning/memorization research" or "Historical research on how we memorize".

The author seems like a nice smart guy and I think he got inspired from reading a lot of learning research and wanted to pull it together into something. He's quite approachable and upbeat in his writing and does a good job at explaining/summarizing studies in a way that's easy for lay people to understand.

My biggest takeaways were being the importance of interleaving (mixed practice), self-testing to figure out what you really know and don't, and the importance of percolation.

I think the author's ultimate takeaway is to approach learning more how our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have. More mixed practice, done in a variety of contexts, distributed over many days with distractions and sleep in between. Test that you actually can do/retrieve something before assuming you can. Rote drilling in the same room doesn't get you much.

I'd love to see a book that covers a meta-analysis of what we know and don't know about learning. From the neurobiology to the education research and everything in between. That's sort of what I was hoping for with this book and I got sometimes bored about reading about learning and cognitive psychology research.

The author does a great job covering the modern history regarding the science of learning. This science is not well known by the public and even educators. And, its findings are often counterintuitive.

For instance, forgetting is apparently a key component of learning. This is because of two reasons. The first is that it is an information filter. Your mind deletes information it does not need to leave more space and focus on the info it needs to promote the learning you need. It prevents the brain from being overwhelmed with clutter. The second is that a little forgetting facilitates re-learning and encoding the learned information in a much stronger way than otherwise. As the author states on pg. 40: “Forgetting is critical to the learning of new skills and to the preservation and reacquisition of old ones.”

The evolution of this science is most interesting as it went through somewhat contradicting chronological steps.

In the late 1800s, Hermann Ebbinghaus came up with the Forgetting Curve. He essentially measured how much material we forget over time. And, according to his measurements we forget a lot and really fast. After only an hour we forget over half of what we learned. After a month, we forget close to 80%.

In the early 1900s, Philip Boswood Ballard’s experiments contradicted the Forgetting Curve, as he demonstrated that we actually remember more over time. He called this phenomena “Reminiscence.”

However, the Forgetting Curve and Reminiscence are not contradictory. The Forgetting Curve applies to rather random facts like attempting to learn a bunch of phone numbers or other rather meaningless material (Ebbinghaus had tested his subject with nonsense syllables. The brain had no way to make encoding association with such material). Reminiscence applies to more meaningful material of the type you are exposed to through academia. Reminiscence is also very strong when considering visual information (famous art pieces, etc.). Often the Forgetting Curve does apply to words that the brain has a harder time to retain. Meanwhile, Reminiscence is very effective when dealing with visual information. The Bjorks formulated that memory has two dimensions: a storage strength and a retrieval strength. Reminiscence applies to storage strength (long term memory not so quick to access) and the Forgetting Curve to retrieval strength (short term memory, working memory). Memories are stored for a long time. But, they are often not readily retrievable without reinforcement or reuse of that specific memory.

After reviewing the basic mechanics of memory. The author describes numerous scientific based tactics on how to improve learning and overall thinking processes. They include:

Not studying or practicing in a steady and constant environment as we are told. Practice in different venues, different classrooms, etc. This often simulates the more chaotic circumstances in which we are tested (chapter 3).

Study at repeated intervals (distributive effect) instead of studying in bigger chunk of uninterrupted time. On pg. 77, the author share a table of what are the optimal intervals given how much time is left before you are taking the test (chapter 4).

Test your knowledge early in the learning process to uncover clearly what you don’t know. And, test yourself often throughout the learning process. Self-testing is a lot more fruitful than highlighting, redrafting outlines, etc. that are considered “passive” and weak learning techniques vs. the self-testing technique that is truly “active” and encodes the information so much better. (chapter 5).

When dealing with a challenging problem, the author reviews the equivalent of thinking processes sequential steps associated with the essence of the scientific method. These include: 1) preparation; 2) incubation; 3) illumination; 4) verification. (chapter 6).

Interleaving. This means introducing randomness in the learning, teaching, and testing process. This is especially effective in identifying different art movements when observing paintings or changing practice modes when studying music (switching from scales, to theory, to pieces, etc.). Interleaving can have broad implication in learning different subjects including math, and other academic disciplines, and numerous sport activities. (chapter 8).

The huge benefit of sleep. Sleep is a powerful part of the learning and encoding information process. This entails that doing some studying in the evening before bed time can be very effective. It can markedly improve testing performance. Sleeping is also a powerful problem solver. Many luminaries walk up in the middle of the night with their key Eureka moments. (chapter 10).

Misleading title. Instead of telling you how to learn, the author tries unsuccessfully to tell the history of learning methods. It was nothing but confusing and felt like just a bunch of facts stacked one on top of the other. Waste of time.

'Glad I borrowed the book from the library and did not bought it.

Memory and learning are not the same thing, but How We Learn tries to unite them. The first half of the book is about innumerable ways people try to memorize. And there as many studies as there are ways. Cramming will let you remember things the next day, but like a telephone number you learn in a bar, it vaporizes soon after. The best way to memorize is to take lots of breaks; change subjects, follow a distraction, even sleep. They are all proven to give better results than marathon memorizing. Studies show twice as much.

Carey says the human brain has the capacity to store the equivalent of three million television shows, which translates into every moment of an entire lifetime. Retrieving all that data however, is problematic. We don’t do that very well. But it’s there. That’s why you might suddenly remember something that happened in childhood that you hadn’t thought of in years, but comes back clearly while thinking about something else entirely. There was an association there. That’s why your brain called it up, but you probably missed it.

Learning is more than memorizing. Learning means you internalize facts, methods and images, and you manipulate them as needed to your advantage. So breaking up learning sessions by applying the knowledge allows you to take ownership of it; it’s all yours if you go farther than just memorizing. There is a disused saying that if you use a new word in three sentences, it’s yours forever. Turns out there’s truth in that.

The learning portion of the book is also a constant emphasis on interleaving, varying activities so that learning one thing is not the only activity. Study after study after study after study shows that the more varied things test subjects do, the more they learn what researchers want them to. This includes having to think about applying what has been learned, diverting to some other subject, and even sleeping.

But with all the studies he explores, Carey never examines the interleaving of mind-altering drugs. There is an entire school of thought that claims the mind-expanding properties of certain chemicals leads to far greater mental processing and creativity than say, cramming for an exam. Great scientists, authors and artists publicly claim they solved problems or had eureka insights or created masterpieces thanks to a session with some drug or other. It should be mentioned if only to dismiss it. But Carey ignores it.

Another learning area Carey doesn’t explore is categorization compared to association. Our brains are pre-tech. They don’t know about number and letter combinations. They don’t file things alphabetically or by date. They file them by association. Just recently (May 2014), San Diego hosted a memorizing contest with acclaimed contestants from around the world. The winners all used the same method: they pictured a scene they liked while memorizing a list of numbers or letters or syllables or words. When they recalled the scene, there were the test letters, ready to be repeated. This turns out to be the standard practice of all the great memory experts. It leverages the brain’s own method of image association, because that’s how we work internally. So taking in the surroundings where you’re memorizing is a hugely important factor in how much you remember.

Burying your head in a book or a screen – not so much.

Categorization vs analogy is something Douglas Hofstader beat to death in Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, but Carey doesn’t give him or it any ink.

How We Learn has far too much padding for my tastes. Carey loves to give lists of examples, and he likes to get chatty with the reader. It diminishes the impact and slows you down. The studies go on ad infinitum.

The bottom line is we can memorize, but we learn best if we use our brains to employ what we’ve memorized. Otherwise the memory disappears – the next day or the next week or the next month. This is no breakthrough.

David Wineberg

This book explains a number of classic research studies on various topics related to human memory and learning. Carey is a science reporter for the New York Times with many years experience writing about scientific topics. In this book, he discusses many of the key research studies that define the core of the scientific literature on human memory and learning, all in an informal tone that is easily accessible to general readers. The book is divided into 4 sections: basic theory (basic brain anatomy relevant for memory and learning), retention (memorization and rote learning), problem solving, and tapping the subconscious (intuition). Each of these sections contains 2-3 chapters discussing particular facets of the topic, going straight back to the original key research in the field, breezing through later developments, and applying the sum of findings to Carey's own learning experiences, as well as some suggestions of how one might apply the findings to improve your learning. The text is illustrated with a few simple drawings to demonstrate particular research tests. End matter consists of a short appendix with some specific ideas of how to apply the research findings, presented in question and answer format, and endnotes citing the original research papers discussed in the text.

I found this book quite informative as well as easy to read. Carey's style nearly lost me in the first few chapters, though, as I couldn't see where he was going with his personal stories of learning successes and failures. The very personal beginning leads right in to the lengthy section on memorization and rote learning. I was becoming impatient by the time I got to the end of that section, since learning, real learning, is so much more than simple memorization. However, Carey's excursions into learning didn't end with memorization—he plowed forward with other key topics such as problem solving, intuition, and sleep. In the end, I came away very impressed with the book, with how Carey presented the key source literature going back to the 1800s on each specific topic in such an accessible manner. He touches on all the topics and figures covered in a standard memory and learning psychology course—Ebbinghouse, Luring and Shereshevsky, HM, Aserinsky, yet he uses his journalist skills to get to the very source of each development, uncover angles that are often overlooked, and pulls all the details together into one coherent story. Carey's inclusion of his personal learning experiences promotes self-reflection, which as Carey points out, further promotes retention of the material. Overall, this is a thoughtful book, and very well researched. It would be an excellent choice for book discussion groups or as a supplemental text to undergraduate or high school courses on the psychology of learning, as well as simply interesting for general readers.

The internet has made it possible to learn things through online courses, sitting right in our living rooms . These courses let us learn things from experts without having to go to a class or having to pay for it. However, many of us who have done this, would be aware that we also forget much of what we learn over a period of time. This is often because we do not engage in practice in that discipline. The question of retaining this acquired knowledge has always been of much interest to me. I spend a lot of time reading books, articles, essays and papers on the internet. I do courses on the internet on subjects of my interest. It was while doing a course on 'Learning How to Learn', that I came across a reference to this book. This book draws on research in Cognitive psychology and Learning and outlines a number of findings which it calls 'new techniques in the Science of Learning'.

The author of this book is a science reporter for the NY Times and he argues that the methods of studying that we have been taught all along and our past ways of Learning are riddled with mistakes. He invokes research on the psychology of Learning and on his own experiences as a student to outline the essential questions regarding Learning. I would summarize them as follows:

- Learning is not sitting at a desk and burying one's face in the book. On the contrary, learning should be appreciated as a restless, piecemeal, subconscious and sneaky process that occurs all the time.
- Change one's learning style by changing the environments in which you learn. For example, one can change the time of study or listen to music as one learns.
- Sleep consolidates and filters learned material and hence is beneficial.
- Spacing study time into multiple sessions is better than concentrating it in one session.
- Cramming is okay as a last resort but you don't 'learn' through cramming.
- Self-testing is one of the strongest methods of learning.
- Reviewing class notes later from memory is a more effective approach to learning than by looking at them and copying them down.
- Distraction during study is beneficial rather than an impediment to learning. Periodic Distraction from study - to check emails or check sports scores - is beneficial to learning.
- Deliberate interruptions on a project work is beneficial and is not to be confused with quitting.
- It is better to work on many skills by interleaving them rather than work on one skill at a time till you get it right.
- Forgetting what we learn is actually an essential part of Learning!
- Self-motivation, self learning , Collaborative learning and getting absorbed in the subject are all important aspects of learning.

One can see that the book captures the key elements of Learning for a student. However, is it a new and revolutionary approach? I find it difficult to share the author's enthusiasm for what he calls this 'Science of Learning' as something new and original. Nor do I agree with his contention that our school systems fail to appreciate how our brains work and fail to take account of 'these innovations in Learning'.

I felt that what the author calls 'innovations' are mostly methods we have been taught in our schools in one way or another. Or they are methods that we ourselves have adopted as a result of having to do well in exams or do well in our jobs. When I reflect on my days in under-funded, government schools in India in the 1960s, I recall our teachers insisting on methods of Learning that embodied most of the elements espoused by the author. For example, my teachers insisted on giving home assignments every day that would take normally about an hour to complete. They would give assignments in Maths, Science, English, Tamil and History on successive days in sequence. And they always made sure that we submitted the finished assignments the next day. I remember that I would do the assignments some days in a single sitting for an hour or sometimes in 2 sittings - one in the evening and the other the next morning. When I reflect on it, I find that it has all the key elements of learning that the author emphasizes. It was a piecemeal process, it spaced study time, made me sleep on it and made me review class notes from memory. Doing homework on a different subject each day took care of interleaving different skills instead of concentrating on one at a time till we got it right.

As I reflected more on it, I was surprised to realize that life in a poor, developing nation inherently incorporates many aspects of Learning that the author talks about. For example, he talks about the importance of Distraction, Deliberate interruptions and Spacing study time into multiple sessions in the process of learning. All these aspects are something that one has to probably manufacture in more affluent circumstances. In developing countries, poor students often have to do many household chores like cooking and cleaning to help their parents, manage younger siblings or attend to a family-owned shop. These duties result in distractions, deliberate interruptions and spacing studies in multiple sessions without ever having to engineer it.
On the other hand, the author emphasizes the value of studying and practising in different locations and environments for a lasting memory and Learning. I feel that this cannot be such an important requisite for Learning. People, who come from the lower economic strata of developing countries, do not have the luxury of varying their environments. Nor do they have the luxury of studying in 'peace and quiet', what with large families living in cramped quarters. In my experience in India, I felt that sitting in the same spot each day amidst all the distractions and disturbances of life was not an impediment to Learning at all.

More than anything else, the book's main contribution is to take the mystery and fear out of the examination process and assure us that being distracted or slacking off or going out for a game of soccer even as you prepare for exams, are all welcome interruptions. They would help us to learn better rather than harm our preparations. For those who have not empirically arrived at this knowledge on their own experience, this book will help in bringing it to their conscious minds and relieve anxiety. And that is a worthy contribution.

I really loved this book. I considered myself a lifetime learner so I'm constantly trying to be more efficient in my learning. What I liked about this book was that he tells you that some of the things you were taught about studying and learning were wrong. For example, studying straight until you mastered it is wrong. Or studying in a quiet area all the time is wrong. And so on, my main takeaway is that to master something like a class you taking, take the final exam on your first day and during the course whenever you hear or read something on the final your ears will perk up. Also, there are two areas in the brain for memory, one is storage and one is retrieval. So ,if you need to memorize a speech , 1/3 should be spent on learning ,the other 2/3 should be reciting and recalling it. This stimulate the storage and retrieval area of the brain. He talks about perception learning which is like the chess master that see the whole board in minutes or the pilot sees the Gauges and know what to do- is a collective analysis of the whole situation. He talks about spacing your studying for better retention and interleaving or mixing it up on by learning something new and relating to something you already know or just changing the area where you study. My favorite is the Ziergarnik effect-quit when the momentum is best and intense so when you return to it, you return with more enthusiasm and priority.
I recommend this book and I plan to use some of its techniques.

Learning is a central part of daily life, but the way we're taught to approach learning is as if it's a punishment. We're chained down to a chair and desk, gulping down forced information in preschool, then high school, our careers, parenting, and eventually every area of life. Before it can even feel new and exciting, we're expected to rote memorize any new learning territory perfectly without any flaws. Does that sound fun? It never has to me. How We Learn helps you take learning back for yourself and own your style of doing it, even those tendencies that have been mostly criticized by academia. Distraction, taking breaks, forgetting things, rotating subjects, listening to music or other noise, and switching up study environments all come into play in this book. You can actually enhance your learning by allowing these so-called bad habits to exist, and beyond that you can even use these habits to your advantage. Learn better, instead of just harder. But this book's not only about test-taking and homework. Whether you're an athlete, artist, musician, writer, parent, teacher, student, doctor, or any other walk of life, this book will enrich the magic of learning for you. It's one of the most inspiring and fun nonfiction books I've ever read, and you can put it to use in your life right away. Discover learning all over again!

Ever since college, I've been interested in how we learn, how to make learning easier, how to "hack" my own brain to increase learning without using up what little extra time I had available between working, studying and finding time to have a life. Back in those days I had a couple of personal learning tools that I only later (much later) realized were more than mere habit but actually worked pretty well....the first was to eat a piece of candy or hard clove while working on a particularly difficult problem - then during a test I would eat the same candy or clove (wondering why it works...the reason is in this book!). The next was a habit I adopted early but retained all the way through grad school and beyond...rapidly "reading" pages upon pages of information right before going to sleep. Then "re-reading" them throughout the night. Yes, I could literally see myself turning the pages and reading the pages again throughout the night. Because I worked my way through college, this was often the only time I had to study...when I slept.

It wasn't until much later when my spouse informed me that was the strangest study habit he had ever seen that I began to wonder if other people did it differently and if so, why. Well this book delves into the fascinating world of how we learn, what works and why. There isn't a one size fits all answer but there are some surprising insights into things that enhance learning versus myths that may not work nearly as well as originally believed.

The implications of how we learn could revolutionize drab old schoolrooms if only this were to fall into the right hands. Millions of kids who can't sit still wouldn't be banished to detention halls but instead, possibly liberated from a life of mundane boredom while still young enough to care about acquiring new skills and knowledge. Adults could stop feeling guilty about not spending every waking hour cramming for some exam or upcoming seminar and instead, focus on finding the right balance between life and work.

The author does a great job making this conversational in style as well as engaging through the use of self testing examples which are both fun and insightful. He shares his own study hacks as well as those of others over the years. It's fun, informative and sure to encourage a new look into how you learn!

Although in a technical sense a book review should not be a summary, in my personal experience summary with commentary is what most useful reviews are on the store. That is probably because we trust strangers to summarize findings, but not to render judgments. My subjective experience with this book is that it was life changing. It has totally changed the way I think about studying and learning. To give you an idea why, I have summarized some of the main ideas:

First, the role of distraction. It turns out that when you are stumped, simply taking a break can be beneficial. There are different kinds of breaks: you might focus your attention on another difficult problem, or you may simply relax. Creative insight in particular benefits from distraction. Scientists have distilled insight into a process: preparation (initial study), incubation (taking a break), illumination (idea surfaces), confirmation (make sure it works). The key is, though, you do have to be stuck, and you do have to put in the work - you have to have something to be distracted from - not starting or spending all your time distracted is skipping the preparation step. This maximizes the use of your subconscious mind - you may not be consciously thinking about it, but your brain still is. By incubating your problem, you allow yourself to come back without the set of assumptions you initially made - it allows you to have fresh eyes on the problem.

Indeed, stopping on an unfinished project actually increases how well you remember that project. Completed projects are more easily forgotten, because your brain no longer views it as important. This can be an important tool, if used deliberately.

Sleep turns out to play a significant role in learning. The sleep cycle follows a pattern of slow wave sleep (stage 1-4) to REM, first emphasizing stages 3-4, but as the night goes on REM cycles and stage 2 grow longer. Slow-wave sleep stage 3-4, which is emphasized in the first half of the night plays a role in consolidating information and facts, whereas in REM sleep, emphasized in the second half of the night, aids in pattern recognition and creative problem solving, as well as interpreting emotionally charged memories and easing the "visceral feeling" you get when thinking about emotional memories. Stage 2 sleep consolidates motor learning - so if you have a recital, or want to solve a creative problem, make sure you get good morning sleep - do not cut your sleep short. When they say "Sleep on it," it actually isn't bad advice. During the night your brain forms new associations and prunes less relevant memories. The sleep cycle isn't very straight forward, but the author does a good job explaining it - a simple chart is invaluable, and I can't reproduce that here.

Self testing is an excellent way to learn. Rather than simply measuring progress, self-testing emphasizes to your brain that the subject matter is important, priming it for learning. Studying the correct answers after testing is far better than just studying the answers (e.g. your class notes) on their own. Even if you can recall a minimal amount of what you studying, testing yourself still has substantial benefits.

One thing that was particularly informative to me was the difference between stored data in your brain and the ability to recall it - retrieval strength. There is a great deal of information and memory locked away in your brain, but you can't access it on demand because it is retained, but not in fast-recall storage. Thus, you may only remember an embarrassing date in high school when something specifically reminds you of it - a smell perhaps, or when your teenager tells you about her bad date. This isn't bad - you don't want to remember irrelevant details or unimportant things, or at least you don't want them at the top of your mind. (on a side note, if you feel like time goes fast, it may be because you aren't having enough novel experiences - as time goes on, your brain prunes out irrelevant things and spends less time storing repeated experiences - if you did the same thing all year, it will feel "fast" because there's little to remember) The act of finding and naming an experience can bring back memories previously locked away - and the harder you work to retrieve a memory, the more it will stick. This applies to experiences, people, facts, whatever. This interlocking of storage strength and retrieval strength seems a much better explanation for learning and remembering than thinking only in terms of storage.

This leads into the role of environment and study. Because your mind stores information and memories as a whole chunk, that is, the facts you learned about the American Revolution will be tied your memory of what music you listened to while you studied and what room you studying in (among a variety of other cues). One study showed that people who study listening to one type of music and then test while listening to the same music, will do as much as 30% better than those who studied to the same music but tested without it. This can actually be bad, though, because without the music what you studied is harder to recall. Thus, you should study in a variety of contexts, therefore storing data and learning in different ways - and maximizing your brain's ability to recall it.
On the subject of recall, it has been well proven that studying in chunks of time is better than studying all at once. If you spend three hours studying, doing it in 3 chucks of 1 hour each is better than 1 chunk of 3 hours. How should you space the intervals though? Turns out, it depends on how long you want to store the information. If you are testing in a week, study every other day; on the other extreme, if you are testing in a year, study once a month. Here's the chart:

Time to Test:
1 week: 1-2 day study interval
1 month: 1 wk interval
3 months: 2 wk interval
6 months: 3 wk interval

To really retain information, spacing out those study sessions maximizes your brains desire to retain the information. This is why cramming allows you retain data short term, but then you forget all of it. Cramming also creates an illusion of fluency - because an idea is in your short term working memory you believe that you actually know the material and will not forget.

This applies to learning categories of things as well. The example he uses is learning different art styles: say, impressionism, post-impressionism, romanticism, expressionism, whatever else, studying the different styles all at once is better than studying each category individually. You would think that learning each category at a time would be better, to keep your brain from getting mixed up - but it turns out that the process of forcing your brain to try harder by mixing it up is exactly what will teach it to distinguish between the different categories. This applies in other contexts as well: if you are learning to make free throws, you should mix up the distances you shoot from rather than doing them all from the free throw line - it gives your brain more to work with, allows it to learn fundamental rules. Mix types of math problems, don't do each type separately. What you don't want to do is develop a type of learning that only works in the context you learned it - trust your brain, give it a real work out.

As someone who spends a lot of time studying in my own time - I've been out of college for nearly a decade - this has revolutionized how I learn. The other day I was studying Greek while watching a football game. That would have been heresy before reading this book. I would watch the game, then study, watch the game then study - it was one of the best study sessions I've had. Before I would have studied in the quiet at my desk, and I would have been antsy and distracted. Watching the game, though, was simply time to cogitate on what I was studying and my focus was actually better. I tested myself as a fundamental part of my studying, even if I knew only half. It forced my brain to focus, and emphasized the importance of the subject matter. Retention was higher. Then, on my calendar, I set an interval to review the material, and noted that I had studying while watching the game, so next time I should study upstairs or with music or something instead.

In short, this book has taught me to work WITH my brain rather than AGAINST it. i really wish I had read this in High School.

The book's promise is to help the reader understand how the mind learns, and share some practical tools and techniques, so that whether you are a student getting ready for the semester finals, or an adult trying to acquire a new skill, be it a physical or intellectual one, you can do it in a better way without beating yourself to death with not-very-efficient repetition and practice sessions.

It achieves its goals: simple yet effective techniques that are the results of memory and learning research of the past hundred years are described in a very concrete manner. They are also contrasted with traditional approaches, often sprinkled with personal stories of the author during his school days. Any university or high school student can empathize with at least one of those personal stories, and this helps the book to have a strong connection with the reader.

Its weakest parts are related to the very superficial introduction of brain structures, as well as lack of the detailed accounts of brain chemistry that jumps into action, but including that part of the memory and learning research would probably make the book at least three times longer.

Its strongest part, on the other hand, is short and simple learning and memory experiments that you can try out yourself very easily. This way, you can test some of the techniques presented, not only on yourself but maybe with some of your friends and family, collecting a few personal data points that might reveal surprising results.

Moreover, the Perceptual Learning Modules (PLMs) and their applications to very different areas such as pilot training and learning how to distinguish art styles were striking examples of research that I've read about for the first time.

The most important findings of the cognitive psychology presented in this book is also probably of interest to teachers, as well as parents. Even though learning has many dimensions, and the book neglects critical ones such as motivation, emotional states, and many others, the simple learning techniques backed by scientific research will be an important addition to your toolbox if you, as a parent or teach, can really introduce them to your students and children.

Memory and learning are two of the most beautiful aspects of the human mind, and this book, without claiming unrealistically good results, shows how you can do a little better without making radical and difficult changes to your daily routine. "Work smarter, not harder" is a cliché we learned to sneer at (and rightfully so), but there's no harm in saying that this book manages to provide an answer to what it really means to work or study "smarter".

I have taught educational philosophy and psychology courses. Both of which go through a section on learning theories. This book basically does the same thing that I do within my class. We go through some of the traditional beliefs of learning and then investigate others. Carey ties in brain research and psychological studies on how we learn. This includes how the places we study, the things we study, and the way we live our life affects how we learn information. While I don't think I would say that everything you think you knew about learning was incorrect, and Carey would agree with me there, the research does show that we don't need to sit in a quiet room in order to learn information. Also, daydreaming and "sleeping on it" can improve memorization. Studying for incremental amounts of time is better than one long stretch. Waking up early for a last review helps with things that need to be memorized, but not necessarily anything else. Cramming does nothing for learning. Having distractions actually helps our brain process faster. If you connect multiple subjects together than learning occurs on a deeper level.
While I don't believe any of this information is new, it is nice that it is written in a way that will reach a large audience of people. Hopefully more people will get a chance to read about this brain research and put it into practice without the fear of reading a scientific book.

This Advance Reader's Edition was provided by Random House through the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing.

As a professional in the field (graduate school in cognitive psychology back in the days when it was first being called that, and a life long interest in information processing and learning during 35 years of working as a school psychologist), I was very interested in seeing how this long-time science reporter conceptualized and documented this topic. And I was very pleasantly surprised. Without getting technical, Carey succeeds in taking a broad view of a diverse range of psychological research and presenting it in understandable and applicable language. I'll definitely be sharing this with some of my fellow educators.

Two errors were noted in the ARC: an incorrect image was used on page 206 and "non-trategy" on page 219. Hopefully, both were corrected for the published edition.

I am an educational psychologist by training and vocation, so I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about how we learn. Much of this book was very familiar to me - the research studies and authors Carey cites are familiar to me and are things I've read, I've seen many of the experiments he describes first-hand - but there was still much in this book that surprised me. Carey does a great job of bringing many different ideas, research, and theories together and his writing is clear and coherent. He also brings in a few ideas that I have not thought about before and new interpretations of many of the ideas that have been prevalent in this field for so long. If you are interested in the science of learning, I highly recommend this book.

This Advance Reader's Edition was provided by Random House through the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing.

As a professional in the field (graduate school in cognitive psychology back in the days when it was first being called that, and a life long interest in information processing and learning during 35 years of working as a school psychologist), I was very interested in seeing how this long-time science reporter conceptualized and documented this topic. And I was very pleasantly surprised. Without getting technical, Carey succeeds in taking a broad view of a diverse range of psychological research and presenting it in understandable and applicable language. I'll definitely be sharing this with some of my fellow educators.

Two errors were noted in the ARC: an incorrect image was used on page 206 and "non-trategy" on page 219. Hopefully, both were corrected for the published edition.

I am an educational psychologist by training and vocation, so I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about how we learn. Much of this book was very familiar to me - the research studies and authors Carey cites are familiar to me and are things I've read, I've seen many of the experiments he describes first-hand - but there was still much in this book that surprised me. Carey does a great job of bringing many different ideas, research, and theories together and his writing is clear and coherent. He also brings in a few ideas that I have not thought about before and new interpretations of many of the ideas that have been prevalent in this field for so long. If you are interested in the science of learning, I highly recommend this book.

The human brain is a wondrous organism, capable of building virtual compartments in which to store knowledge, and fashioning methods of connecting disparate specks of information and stitching them together into concrete and abstract thought.

Each day, we are bombarded with many more impressions -- sights, sounds, smells, concepts, theories, and "facts" -- than we can possibly organize, store, and retrieve. And yet our brains keep amassing data and tagging it so that we can build comprehension and access details (from memories to factoids) months and years later.

In this approachable and thought-provoking book, Benedict Carey prompts us to think about thinking and learning. He provides an array of data points and then takes a step back to enable us to work through the ideas at our own pace and inclination.

No doubt his low-key metacognitive approach will resonate to varying degrees with different readers, and that is exactly as it should be. I am reflective and linear in my thinking, so for me this book was a series of "aha"s, "ha!"s, and "I need to think some more about that"s. You may well feel differently.

Thus, my rating is five solid stars, but I recognize that those with specialized knowledge of neuroscience and/or psychology may find this relatively elementary, and other sincere readers may just not like it. Again, that's exactly as it should be with this sort of subject matter.

Title: How We Learn by Benedict Carey
(The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why it Happens)
Publisher: Random House (Sept 2014)
272 pp
Genre: Nonfiction, psychology, education, self test, memory, learning
4 Stars ****
Author: Benedict Carey is a NYTimes award winning science and medical reporter. Previously he worked for the LA Times. Carey has written numerous fascinating and wide ranging articles. Strangely I love his obituaries, so scientific people. He is also the author of two science adventures for teens: Island of the Unknowns and Poison Most Vial.
Story line:
This is a relatively short book for an extensive subject of the cognitive science of learning. Carey has made it an interesting, engaging read, easy to follow. There is practical advice on how to apply learning and memory to our own lives. An appendix neatly summarizes Essential Questions in 6 pages.
I was intrigued by Mary Roach's statement "I feel as if I've owned a brain for 54 years and only now discovered the operating manual." I looked forward to reading this, and savored it over two months, a plane ride, train journey and beach book. While I enjoyed reading this, it is written (and very well) for a general audience, with much feeling like common sense and perhaps even old fashioned (therefore not surprising): Repetition is essential to learning. Although it is only part of it. Good habits and sleep are essential. Problem solving and concentration are also important.
Learning is different for everyone, and learning how the brain retrieves information will be useful to most people. I was interested in people learning by creating scenes, while I always listened to music. Mendelsohn's Hebridian overture with Leonard Bernstein was an essential study tool. I still have several recordings in multiple formats!
This deserves a wide reading, especially for an aging population. Teenagers would greatly benefit from reading.
Let's not forget to learn.
Read on:
Charles Duhigg The Power of Habit
Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow
Greg Frost Maximizing Brain Control
Peter C. Brown Make it Stick
Barbara Oakley A Mind for Numbers
Gabriel Wyner Fluent Forever - my next read!
Quotes:
If the brain is a learning machine, then it's an eccentric one, and it performs best when its quirks are exploited.
Any memory has ...a storage strength and a retrieval strength...the old dog quickly relearns old tricks.
Don't forget your brain vitamins.
Normally, when I am visited by the Ghost of Physics Past, I was not entirely patient.
Testing is studying, of a different and powerful kind.
Using our memory changes our memory in ways we don't anticipate.
Testing has brought fear and self-loathing into so many hearts....
I'll leave it to others to explain Mozart.

Read as an ARC from Netgalley

Let’s broaden the margins. By examining the four major components of learning: 1) basic theory, 2) retention, 3) problem solving and 4) tapping the subconscious, Benedict Carey explores learning with a new twist in his powerful, new book, How We Learn. He explores “The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens.

Carey searches the learning theory literature and classroom studies on learning to single out the why factor. This is certainly an exiting, fresh attempt to understanding the human animal. His work is a little reminiscent of the TV series, “Your Bleeped up brain.” While he leaves no stone alone, he thrills us with amusing puzzles, games and anecdotes that tantalize our curiosity.

The content is substantiated with charts, graphs and theories that guide his zeal. Having graduated from the University of Colorado with a BA and an MA from Northwestern University, Benedict Carey is an award-winning science reporter. Indeed, this important book harbors literary style and strong imagery, causing us to step back and see a greater picture.

My thanks to Benedict Carey, the author, and Goodreads First Reads Giveaway for my copy of How We Learn: The surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens for the copy I won in the Giveaway.

Over the years, as an educator of young children, I have read many articles and books on brain research and how children learn. Benedict Carey took many of the ideas and studies of others and formed some interesting conclusions about how we humans learn. His conclusions and how he presents his ideas on sleep in relation to learning seem very logical for example. Considering the ages and stages of learning in very young children, many of his ideas on learning fit nicely into what is developmentally appropriate for preschool children. Mixing learning facts with learning skills is the natural way young children learn, as they learn through play.

I think How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where and Why It Happens is worth reading for educators with the ideas presented that fit into other commonly held ideas that are ever changing and evolving as more research is done in brain research.

"How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens" by Benedict Carey is a fascinating read. It really has me thinking that schools, including universities, need to revamp their teaching methods. Teaching and learning is not simply feeding information to groups of students who simply ingest it and retain it if they are paying attention and taking notes.

This book looks at the students who seem to just take everything in and never need to study and those who just seem to have too many blocks and hurdles to being able to learn. What causes some to become frustrated and quit while others look at frustration as a challenge and continue? What do it take to be a good problem solver? Can you learn better by learning things in smaller chucks spaced out over time or as much as possible in the least amount of time? And more.

Don't read this book thinking only of children, teens, and young adults as students. We are all students, learning thing throughout our entire lives.

A great read for anyone with an interest in learning and how our brains work or don't work with the program!

The subheading for this book is that common sense is surprising. I do not think that I agree with Mr. Carey on this. I think that it is true that we've been taught wrong and that the educational system values assessment and achievement in a way that infringes upon learning. His revelations are not that new, but they are honest and brave all the same.

It is my hope that this book will be read by educators and by students. It needs to be read by everyone. There must be a fundamental shift in how we view education in this country and M. Carey's book provides a lot of the background necessary to begin the conversation about learning and teaching and facilitating the best learning.

In today's teaching world assessment is the hot new topic. How awesome would it be if what Mr. Carey discovered about humainty's ability to learn and to use that knowledge was actually evaluated? How much more would people be able to achieve if emphasis was placed on encouraging children to learn for learning's sake?

Learning takes place everywhere and in many surprising ways. Benedict Carey mines the research literature on learning to provide the results scientists, psychologists, and educators' labors. In ten short chapters with titles like "Breaking Good Habits," "The Hidden Value of Ignorance," and "Learning Without Thinking," the reader accompanies the author on an exploratory voyage on the frontier of learning theory.

One key fact Carey discovered is that scientists and others are still just laying the groundwork on how learning actually happens, so be prepared to change your strategies in the future. How memory works is still under construction so what is known is almost overshadowed by what is not known. However, the author does provide ways for the reader to increase the odds of their efforts being rewarded. Besides, looking at study habits, sleep habits, long-term vs short term memories, pretesting material before actual reading the material, and many other bizarre practices, the author improvises ways you can utilize what is know in improving how you learn.

How We Learn is easily read, but take the time to think through the implications of Carey's findings and then try implementing one or two of the strategies. Good learning to you!

Written in a lively conversational and easy to read style, this book is full of useful information for anyone trying to learn something (and who isn’t?) or anyone trying to help someone else learn (teachers, parents, trainers, etc.) A lot of the information in the book goes against commonly accepted wisdom about learning--interruptions can be useful for instance--but all of it is backed up by science, which author Benedict Carey does a good job explaining, and once you know the how and why even the counter-intuitive suggestions begin to make a lot of sense and many accorded with my own experiences as a learner and educator. My copy of this book is marked with so many post-it flags it practically flutters and I know I will be referencing it frequently now that the school year has started.

I really enjoyed this book, but found it wanting in compared to Brain Rules, by John Medina, which I felt was a more science-rooted version of the same story, that condensed the findings down to simple rules for learning. That said, Benedict Carey did an excellent job finding resources, giving the history, and explaining the popular misconceptions of learning science. I found this book to be well written throughout, kept me engaged, and reinforced several of the things I've learned about how people learn from other sources.

This would be an excellent springboard for many who teach in a corporate environment, or those who desire to learn more deeply and more effectively. As an introduction to deeper learning concepts, it does an admirable job of reaching each topic and preparing the reader for more in depth learning.

This book is very important in questioning conventional wisdom about learning. It is clear that much learning is addressed at developing expertise at highly specialized knowledge, and consequently it is easy for us to make assumptions about the way one should study, the study environment, how to prepare for tests, etc. There is much conventional thinking about all of this, and Mr. Carey attempts to question some of it, and indicate possibilities for best practices, based not just on a healthy attitude of skepticism, but on substantial research that has been done in psychology. The book is very easy to read, with well-supported points, and I think that many of the ideas presented, although perhaps counter-intuitive, are worth implementing. I have definitely found a number of his suggestions and points worthwhile, and can highly recommend the book as potentially helping to develop more effective learning strategies.

As a parent, and sometimes a struggling student myself, I found":How We Learn" by Benedict Carey an interesting read. I was especially interested in sections that referred to learning a foreign language and how this process is best facilitated. I find that I pick them up fairly easily and retain much of what I learn. Carey outlines why this is and how our brain functions on this and many other fronts. Many of the things that college students do in order to cram for the exam are just ineffective. The book, while very interesting, does tend to meander a little bit and is a bit disjointed. I would recommend it to those who are teachers or considering a career in teaching as well as those who want to know how to improve their own personal learning habits.

Learning how to learn is central to being a successful student. In 7th grade science we learned that pushing against a wall which remains unmoved accomplishes no "work" at all. Working smart instead of hard is efficient, and much more enjoyable than cramming and sweating. Picture this: a woodcutter swinging a dull ax doesn't get much done. And he's exhausted.

This book is a wise tour of observations on how to learn. It will make for a happier student. That said, it's not exactly a page-turner. But then, the author's point is to learn to relax about learning. This book may not delight you, but it will more than repay you for the investment of your time. Read it in small helpings. Review what stands out to you. Apply. Life is a pop quiz.

This exploration of how we learn-- really how we learn, not how we think we should, or do, or ought to-- is fascinating. Carey's conversational prose mixes anecdote with evidence, sharing life experiences and research that underlines it, in an accessible, enjoyably read. It's especially illuminating to find out that the way we're taught to study (focus on the test, just on the test, and nothing but the test) is actually the least useful method if a learner wants to retain information. Including many self-tests and quizzes in the text, Carey invites the reader to expand, experiment with, and test the research put forth in this text. A highly-enjoyable and illuminating read!

An informative look at recent research on how people learn, with an eye toward the practical matter of using better methods to learn and study.

Carey is a personable writer and makes what could be a tedious book, not so. This is not a standard "study guide." How We Learn looks at recent (and sometimes not so recent, but overlooked) research. Carey does this in an entertaining and informative way. From this research, we learn practical learning / study techniques.

I found the information on the timing of study / review to be particularly helpful. Also great was the look at the difference between understanding something and being able to recall something.

An excellent, relevant and truly useful book for students and for anyone who enjoys to learn, or simply has something they need to learn -- and that's most of us!

‘How We Learn’ asks readers to consider the possibility that many time-honored learning strategies, techniques, and assumptions don’t in fact deliver all they promise for large numbers of people across age groups, subject fields, and cultures.

Minimizing distractions while we read, endless and frequent repetitions to promote retention, maintaining a quiet and comfortable study-space visited at fixed hours, intensely-focused concentration - often to the point of exhaustion – I felt I was reading a litany of my entire educational experience from elementary school through college.

But I also had to acknowledge the author’s well-argued critique of such accepted wisdom – backed by clear experimental results - and I became engrossed in this tale of personalities, insights and conclusions that revealed (and continues to reveal) core ideas in the once again thriving field of ‘learning science’.

‘How We Learn’ is not a self-help book in the sense of a guided program with specific exercises – although Carey does provide a handful of ‘try-this’ problems that illustrate various learning techniques. It’s more a book that lays out the historical groundwork of learning science and surveys key areas of focus in the hope interested readers will seek out more in-depth, specific material as a result – I know I did.

Nor is the author himself pushing other books, seminars or products. Carey writes like the experienced newspaper science reporter he is, rather than an academic targeting journal audiences. His enthusiasm is personal and he frequently alludes to his own experience as a musician and writer for examples of learning successes and failures. Combined with readable, conversational prose, he gives the book a down-to-earth feel in spite of being largely a survey of scientific research.

Of several study areas the most fascinating concept in the book for me is the notion that memories have two (at least two) components: a storage component and a retrieval component. The storage component is described as the passive recorder that takes in our entire sensory lives (with ample storage space in our brains to spare). Easy and fluent retrieval of those stored memories however is another story.

Many of us fear forgetting factual information, but the act of forgetting actually performs two essential functions critical for effective learning. Forcing ourselves to recall material, as opposed to simply reciting what’s before our eyes, helps the mind filter competing memories and strengthens the retrieval mechanism, not unlike exercising a muscle.

The end result is a more ‘retrievable’ memory than when it was first stored. I found this a terrific and counter intuitive example of how our egos and insecurities can work against our learning goals.

Another idea, ‘interleaving’ is particularly applicable to my own study as a musician. Rather than spending an entire practice session on one specific area, it’s common among musicians and teachers to divide a session into different types of work: technical, theoretical, performance.

On the surface this runs counter to the axiom of ‘sticking with one thing until mastered’ and I’ve often questioned whether it really contributes to learning or is simply a cultural artifact of Romantic-era teaching methods.

Sure enough, learning science evidence suggests it’s a more effective, more holistic method of study that combines physical motor skill with intellectual material.

The effects of interruption on studying were completely unexpected and fascinating as well. Its impact depends upon when in the process it occurs. Being interrupted (which can also be self-generated, as in taking a break) as you approach the completion of a task creates strong ‘resistance’ that imprints that task in your brain in a way that’s actually stronger than would happen if you simply continued on to complete it without the interruption!

It took awhile to wrap my head around that one but it brought to mind writers who train themselves never to end a scene when stopping for the day – so as to have a vividly-recalled, inspiring moment to begin the next work session with.

Carey really ties things together nicely in the final chapter, ‘The Foraging Brain’, where he argues our very notions of education – not just western but cross-culturally – reflect only the last several thousand years of mankind’s million year existence. During most of that time our ancestors lived as foragers and Carey suggests that our brains remain far more adapted to that piecemeal, non-linear, iterative way of consuming and integrating the world around us then they are to the heavily structured, institutional-derived learning methods that persist to this day.

I’ve ‘self-dabbled’ in this stuff since I was a kid, vaguely aware that how I studied (i.e. length of time per session, number of sessions and the time between them) seemed to effect my retention, but unsure how to nail down an effective approach or whether I was just fooling myself or rationalizing poor study habits.

‘How We Learn’ confirmed many of my suspicions and gave me the confidence to act on them. If you’ve had similar thoughts, the book may just provide an open door that encourages you to seek out further, more detailed information more applicable to your own learning style. There’s real life-changing potential here and I recommend it highly.

Science journalist Benedict Carey offers interested readers an engaging way of coming up to speed quickly with the latest research in brain science in his book titled, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens. While “surprising” is in the subtitle, I found that my learning style was reinforced by what I read in this book, and much of the research he noted I’ve run across from other sources. General readers are those most likely to learn something new and useful from this interesting book.

Rating: Three-star (It’s ok)

As Benedict Carey explains, "this book is not about some golden future. The persistent, annoying, amusing, ear-scratching present is the space we want to occupy. The tools in this book are solid, they work in real time, and using them will bring you more in tune with the beautiful, if eccentric, learning machine that is your brain."

Ironically, perhaps paradoxically, Carey invites his readers to use their minds to think about their minds in new ways. He examines an emerging theory that accounts for new ideas about when, where, and why learning happens: The New Theory of Disuse. "It's an overhaul, recasting forgetting as the best friend of learning, rather than its rival."

There really is a "science of learning" and it requires the same rigor and focus that the study of physics or calculus does. His research and analysis of others' research invalidate some assumptions about learning, validate others. When asked, "How much does quizzing oneself like with flashcards help?" here is Carey's response:

"A lot, actually. Self-testing is one of the strongest study techniques there is. Old-fashioned flashcards work fine; so does a friend, work colleague, or classmate putting you through your paces. The best self-quizzers do two things: They force you to [begin italics] choose [end italics] the right answer from several possibilities; and they give you immediate feedback, right or wrong. As laid out in Chapter 5, self-examination improves retention and comprehension for more than an equal amount of review time. It can take many forms as well. Reciting a passage from memory, either in front of a colleague or a mirror, is a form of testing. So is explaining it to yourself while pacing the kitchen, or to a work colleague or friend over lunch. As teachers often say, 'You don't fully understand a topic until you have to teach it.' Exactly right."

In a similar vein, Albert Einstein once suggested to a graduate student at Princeton, "If you can't explain a great idea to a six year-old, you really don't understand it."

Of even more interest and value to me is his repudiation of cramming. Is it a bad idea? "Not always. Cramming works fine as a last resort, a way to ramp up fast for an exam if you're behind and have no choice. The downside is that, after the test, you won't remember a whole lot of what you `learned' - if you remember any at all. The reason is that the brain can sharpen a memory only after some forgetting has occurred...Spaced rehearsal or study or self-examination are far more effective ways to prepare. You'll remember the material longer and be able to carry it into the next course or semester easily. Studies find that people remember up to twice as much material that they rehearsed in spaced or tested sessions than during cramming. If you must cram, do so in courses that are not central to your main area of focus."

These are among the dozens of other subjects and issues that also caught my eye:

o Cognitive science and physiology of the brain: Aids for study (xi-xvi)
o Retrieval of memory (21-41, 59-79, 82-97, and 205-209)
o Philip Boswood Ballard (Pages 29-35 and 205-206)
o Elizabeth Ligon Bjork and Robert Bjork (35-40, 93-100, 153-158, and 160-163)
o Context for memory, environment for learning (47-64)
o Four Bahrick Study (69-74)
o Testing as self-examination (76-79)
o Preparation in learning (92-103)
o Carey's experiences in learning: Incubation or percolation, problem solving (107-130 and 131-148)
o Obstacles to learning (124-126, 145-156, and 167-168)
o Psychology of learning (134-1e39)
o Learning Cognition: Discrimination (142-146, 159-163, and 175-194)
o Interleaving (163-171)
o The brain during sleep (195-212)
o Learning: Essential Questions (223-238)

Here's my take on Carey's book:

1. People must be self-motivated to learn.
2. They learn more when focused on whatever interests them.
3. Achieving that objective is the reward they value most.
4. People learn more when they learn with others, in collaboration.
5. The more people explain something to others, the better they will understand it.

Ben Carey concludes his book with a Q&A section, responding to many of the questions you and others may have. (I had them and others before I began to read it.) Here is one question of special interest to me: "Is there any effective strategy for improving performance on longer-term creative projects?" That is an excellent question and his answer to it again stresses the importance spacing one's efforts. "Simply put: Start [longer-term creative projects] as early as possible, and give yourself permission to walk away. Deliberate interruption is not the same as quitting. On the contrary, stopping work on a big, complicated presentation, term paper or composition activates [or re-activates] the project in your mind, and you'll begin to see and hear all sorts of things in your daily life that are relevant. You'll also be more tuned into what you think about those random, incoming clues. This is all fodder for your project -- it's interruption working in your favor [rather than as a distraction] -- though you do need to return to the desk or drafting table before too long."

Those who purchase this book expecting Carey to reveal a "secret sauce," secrets, short cuts, etc. to accelerate their learning process will be very disappointed. This is not a book for intellectual dilettantes. There really is a "science of learning" and it requires the same rigor and focus that the study of physics or calculus does. The best works of non-fiction offer a journey of personal journey. To those who are about to read this brilliant book, I offer a heartfelt "Bon voyage!"

While I thought this book was a fascinating study of learning, very little of it stuck in my mind. I just finished it, and if I was given a quiz on Mr. Carey's book right now, I would most likely flunk. But wait, did he not say: "Forgetting is as critical to learning as oxygen . . . ." Maybe more of the book will come back to me after I sleep on it. Isn't that the way the author said it was suppose to be? I do remember, though, the last sentence in the sleep chapter, where the author stated: "I think of sleep as learning with my eyes closed." I like that thought. (Maybe I just need to get some sleep . . . . :)

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth

An engaging, informative and often surprising explanation of how the brain works and how we learn. From why forgetting is important, to how memories are retrieved and stored, Benedict Carey’s new book is completely accessible to all. I’ve found myself sharing tidbits of information from his book throughout my conversations. Students (and parents!) will find the secret to studying for tests in his chart regarding optimal study times based on how far away a test is. I immediately sent it to my kids!

It is always enjoyable when someone with a flair for language does the work of digging thru research and then summarizes it for you. Definitely a worthwhile read for with any interest in how and why we learn.

Years ago I was very interested in Superlearning. The one technique I found most effective was playing Baroque music while I was studying. It did indeed help me master and retain the material and I still use it today. So I was most interested in reading this book which brings together the science and theory of learning.

The book is interesting and easy to read. It is divided into four sections: Basic Theory, Retention, Problem Solving and Tapping the Subconscious. There are tips one might implement to see if it enhances learning but this is not what I would consider a how to book. The author dances around a definition of learning. I agree there are different types of learning but there is a distinction between memorization and understanding. One can memorize the periodic table or a song in a foreign language without comprehension. Obviously learning is not solely a cerebral function but a holistic process that involves and engages more than just the mind. The appendix, containing questions and answers, distills the most practical aspects of the book. It seems that many of the things students were discouraged from doing actually facilitate learning. If nothing else, this book should free one from methodologies that have been tried but are not necessarily true.

Title: How We Learn

Author: Benedict Carey

Publisher: Random House

Year: 2014

Pages: 200 (e-Book (Nook), ARC; hardcover book 272)

[Disclaimer: I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my fair and unbiased review of this book. I was given no compensation and I am not required to write a positive review. I only tell you this because someone in the government thinks you need to know. To be sure, I don't even get to keep the book.]

The problem with reviewing this book is that I don't know enough about Mr Carey to know if he has an agenda for writing this book or if he is just really excited about the sort of research he reports in the book. That is, maybe he's so interested in this stuff that he just needed to have an outlet and wanted to share it with an audience who would appreciate it. Then again, "The more I discovered about it, the stronger the urge to do something bigger than a news story" (185). I actually get this. I actually understand something so powerfully welling up inside that it has to have a vent. This book exudes Carey's enthusiasm for this subject.

But he goes on to spell out his objective a little more clearly, "It dawned on me that all these scientists, toiling in obscurity, were producing a body of work that was more than interesting or illuminating or groundbreaking. It was practical..." (185) I get this too.

I work in Special Education and much of the work that I do involves the day in, day out, routine building type of consistency that drives me nuts. I need the mix up. I need the frenzied action that comes with chaos. Oh, sure, I have lesson plans and I try very hard to follow them. But maybe there is something to the idea that going through a day without distractions, a day full of routine, a day without ever taking a break is not the best way to learn.

Or maybe it's like writing a book review: so that when I get stuck with what to say next, I should just stop, re-read what I've written or take a video game break, and start again later. I used to do this when I was preaching full-time: maybe I had writer's block, maybe I couldn't get the transition to work smoothly to the next point, or maybe there appeared to be no coherence between the introduction and conclusion. I would just stop. I hadn't read a study that suggested doing so was a healthy idea, I just did it. I'd put it away and forget about it...sometimes not even bothering to finish until Sunday mornings...sometimes not finishing until I actually stepped into the pulpit to preach the sermon.

I remember learning to read Koine Greek this way. I would practice my vocabulary words until I learned them and then use them in class and in translating, but when it came to test time, I would break out the cards again. It was helpful, to me at least, to create space between study sessions. There's also the idea of 'spacing' which I found to be an especially helpful idea--particularly as it relates to how I teach in my classroom. Regrettably, we spend a lot of time with word lists in education--especially sight (or high-frequency words) words which are the words we use most in our conversations and reading. Maybe what I hadn't considered is how environment does affect student learning. We always say that behavior is environmental, but suppose learning is too. This would explain (in part, at least) why students--especially special education students--find it so terribly difficult to generalize skills learned in one environment to another--whether related to behavior or academics.

What I like about this book is that it confirmed that I am not an oddball because certain things worked for me. A quiet setting never worked for me when it came to studying (cf. p 11). I prefer to study in a place where there is activity and action; chaos and confusion. I like the distractions. I like to sit in the middle of the living room with a television or radio playing in the background. I like to study in different places--and at different times. I like to mess with the schedule--and I like to do that for my students as well. I love scrapping the lesson plans, no matter how beautifully written, and challenge the students with a game or hands-on task (cf. p 52). I was especially happy to learn that 'forgetting' is as important to learning as 'remembering' is. I was also happy to learn that taking naps is not a sign of being a slouch.

Maybe this book isn't so much about the way we learn as it is about the way we teach. Interestingly, much of what I read in the book seems to correlate wonderfully what I have been learning over the last two years about formative instructional practices. (Teachers who read this will understand what I mean without my having to give a dissertation here as space precludes such a lesson.) Knowing ahead of time that 'testing' is important for learning as mere studying is was enlightening. One of the hardest things I have found in my own classroom is getting students to buy into the idea that we don't have to get everything correct. I did this just today when I was giving my students a pre-test on simple subtraction facts and one of my students complained, "I don't know what to do." I kept telling him that it didn't matter; just guess. Write down some numbers. Practice. Try. "...guessing wrongly increases a person's likelihood of nailing that question, or a related one, on a later test" (89). But we are born and bred on the notion that we must get it right. (I think chapter 5, The Hidden Value of Ignorance: The Many Dimensions of Testing was my favorite chapter because it was the most practical.)

I enjoyed this book. It was readable. It was fun (the author includes a lot of samples in the book so the reader can practice the theories being written about.) There were helpful charts and illustrations scattered throughout the book. It was an interesting tour through some of the history of learning that I hadn't read about in graduate school. Some of the names were familiar, but as he notes, these scientists who have pioneered these studies in how memory works worked in relative obscurity. So unless you are on the cutting edge of this research it is likely you haven't heard of many of these men and women. I applaud the author for bringing them to the popular reader. Carey makes their stories readable and enjoyable.

This book will be helpful, in my opinion, for teachers who want to do a little experimentation to see if some of these theories are true in practice. But for the armchair psychologist (as well as the expert), this is a good place to begin a study of how we learn. It's a fun read, but it's not light. It is challenging at times; nevertheless, I think Carey did a great job of parsing out much of the nomenclature for his readers and making this work accessible to a larger audience.

I'll let him close my review: "Learning is hard. Thinking is hard. It's as exhausting, though in a different way, as physical labor and wears most of us down at a similar rate" (p 176). Maybe something we should do is simply let our students take a nap every now and then.

5/5--an excellent volume and contribution to our understanding of how we learn and, conversely, how we teach.

PS-even though I received an ARC (which I don't get to keep), I will be purchasing this book so that I can do a little more research and enjoy the book at a deeper level.

Naturally, the first thing that attracted me to this book was the subject matter, but the second reason I snatched it up was because I immediately recognized who the author was: Benedict Carey is a journalist I recognize and admire. I’m interested in practically all branches of science, but pay close attention to advances in neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology. Those just happen to be the ones that Carey also specializes in. That is why I am well aware of his style of writing and his achievements over the years.

I’m am pleased that I was given the opportunity to read and review an Advanced Reader’s Edition of “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens” in exchange for an honest review. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. Carey took a formidable subject—the neuroscience of learning—and made it easy and fun to discover scientists have learned about this topic in recent years.

This book targets the general reading population. It is written at a level that is easy for just about anyone to understand. Personally, I’d have preferred a book aimed slightly higher because I’ve already read a lot in this area, but the book still held my interest and I am happy I read it.

The book consists of discussions of all the latest research on the neurology of learning. Much of the book feels like sitting down with the author over coffee (or a beer) and having him enthusiastically and eloquently relate to you stories about hundreds of experiments that have lead us to all that we know today about the neurology of learning. All of the experiments are fascinating, but many are downright funny. Take, for example, this one: “… participants tried to memorize a word list they heard through earphones while standing with their heads inside a box containing multicolored flashing lights (two dropped out due to nausea). In another, subjects studied nonsense syllables while strapped to a board, which tipped on an axis like a teeter-totter, like some cruel schoolyard prank.” I had to laugh out loud when I read that. Science and scientists can be so bizarre! But most of the science stories he tells are about brilliantly conceived and executed experiments, each of which propelled us closer and closer to understanding how the brain learns best.

Naturally, I learned a lot while reading this book. Heck, it was a book about learning! And yes, I think I can actually remember a great deal of it. But the million-dollar question is: will I remember it all in a few weeks after I’ve read and reviewed half-a-dozen more books? The thing is: we do tend to remember what shocks us and there is a lot of shocking and amazing new knowledge about the science of learning between the covers of this fine book…so chances are I will continue to remember those parts that were the most shocking and those that prove to be most useful to me.

Benedict Carey's How We Learn, is an accessible text that reviews recent and relevant research on how the mind works in relation to learning models and frameworks. It is not, nor is it intentioned as an end-all reference work on the subject. Instead, the book is a good read for students who are struggling with getting through high school and college, realizing their current approach isn't working, and looking for something different.

Carey takes the reader through a personal contextualization of why he wrote the book, and surprisingly, his story sounds similar to many of my students' perceptions, once I'm able to get them talking about how they really feel about school. While this book is not a polemic on the state of our educational system, Carey understands that his experience in primary and secondary school didn't work for him. Not until he reframed his understanding of education did he begin to become successful in pursuing the knowledge for which he sought.

Carey explains how the biology of the brain makes learning strategies that seem antithetical to current best practices, actually the ideal. Think that a quiet, out of the way corner is the best place for your brain to learn? Think again. Carey offers research that shows distractions and noise more often support the longer-term acquisition of knowlege. Adults say it's best to go ahead and put in one more hour to get your assignment finished, however Carey tells the reader that sleeping on that uncompleted project may be just the thing to help the learning soak in.

There is no discussion of vitamin supplements you must take to develop your cognitive capacity, no grocery cart of smart foods you have choke down, and no secret list of off-label-use pharmaceuticals to acquire. Carey combines his journalist's knack for questioning with his passion for learning to provide the reader with an easy to grasp resource for developing better learning strategies. If you're looking for a quick fix in cramming for the SAT, this isn't the book for you. If you're interested in optimizing your behaviors to change the way you acquire and retain important information as a life-long process, then you will be well-served with How We Learn.

Parents, after reading this book, you may want to leave your copy "laying around the house" for your teenager to find and explore on their own. Read the book for why this strategy works.

Great book. Informative, engaging, smooth, comprehensive, understandable, up to date and knows its history, on and on. My main issue is with the title -- it's much more how we learn spelling or history, and almost nothing about learning to ride a bike or learning how to make better decisions.

I loved some of the writing. Cramming for a test is like 'stuffing a cheep suitcase,' it works for a day or two but is not substitute for real luggage. Forgetting is like a spam filter, otherwise we'd be burdened with remembering an enormous amount of useless stuff. And it's not all clever lines. Certainly gives a more complete history and state-of-the-art understanding than many undergrad learning texts. Includes a nice summary at the end (because you can't remember everything you read!).

This wonderful book is interesting on its own, and would be very useful for anyone getting ready to learn a foreign language or take university classes. Just remember it's not how we learn *everything*.

This book is for students, teachers, parents, or just about anyone who is interested in the way the human brain works.

As an 8th grade history teacher, I was interested in learning more about how people learn so I could improve my teaching strategys to better suit the way my students learn.

This book provides many strategies for both teachers and students to use to better remember things and retain information at a higher rate.

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens is an engaging book about the relationship between how our memory works and how we learn. This book gives insight into the remarkable ways our brain functions and easy ways we can use this information in our every day lives. This book is an entertaining and easy read that has practical and doable advice for students, athletes and everyone who wants to learn better and quicker Read as a netgalley copy.

Although not every chapter is good, this is a good analysis of learning and how the human memory works. I enjoyed the bits of trivia thrown into the mix and am now testing some of the theories by using them in my lesson planning.

A great book covering the recent history on the research of various Learning Methodologies, with a short background of the discovery and the discoverers as well! The author should also provide his contact email to aid his interested readers and encourage their further queries.