How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens

by Benedict Carey

Overview

In the tradition of The Power of Habit and Thinking, Fast and Slow comes a practical, playful, and endlessly fascinating guide to what we really know about learning and memory today—and how we can apply it to our own lives.

From an early age, it is drilled into our heads: Restlessness, distraction, and ignorance are the enemies of success. We’re told that learning is all self-discipline, that we must confine ourselves to designated study areas, turn off the music, and maintain a strict ritual if we want to ace that test, memorize that presentation, or nail that piano recital.

But what if almost everything we were told about learning is wrong? And what if there was a way to achieve more with less effort?

In How We Learn, award-winning science reporter Benedict Carey sifts through decades of education research and landmark studies to uncover the truth about how our brains absorb and retain information. What he discovers is that, from the moment we are born, we are all learning quickly, efficiently, and automatically; but in our zeal to systematize the process we have ignored valuable, naturally enjoyable learning tools like forgetting, sleeping, and daydreaming. Is a dedicated desk in a quiet room really the best way to study? Can altering your routine improve your recall? Are there times when distraction is good? Is repetition necessary? Carey’s search for answers to these questions yields a wealth of strategies that make learning more a part of our everyday lives—and less of a chore.

By road testing many of the counterintuitive techniques described in this book, Carey shows how we can flex the neural muscles that make deep learning possible. Along the way he reveals why teachers should give final exams on the first day of class, why it’s wise to interleave subjects and concepts when learning any new skill, and when it’s smarter to stay up late prepping for that presentation than to rise early for one last cram session. And if this requires some suspension of disbelief, that’s because the research defies what we’ve been told, throughout our lives, about how best to learn.

The brain is not like a muscle, at least not in any straightforward sense. It is something else altogether, sensitive to mood, to timing, to circadian rhythms, as well as to location and environment. It doesn’t take orders well, to put it mildly. If the brain is a learning machine, then it is an eccentric one. In How We Learn, Benedict Carey shows us how to exploit its quirks to our advantage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812984293
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/09/2015
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	400,999
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Benedict Carey is an award-winning science reporter who has been at The New York Times since 2004, and one of the newspaper’s most emailed reporters. He graduated from the University of Colorado with a bachelor’s degree in math and from Northwestern University with a master’s in journalism, and has written about health and science for twenty-five years. He lives in New York City.

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Chapter One
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Copyright © 2015 Benedict Carey.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Broaden the Margins ix

Part 1 Basic Theory

1 The Story Maker 3

The Biology of Memory

2 The Power of Forgetting 21

A New Theory of Learning

Part 2 Retention

3 Breaking Good Habits 45

The Effect of Context on Learning

4 Spacing Out 65

The Advantage of Breaking Up Study Time

5 The Hidden Value of Ignorance 80

The Many Dimensions of Testing

Part 3 Problem Solving

6 The Upside of Distraction 107

The Role of Incubation in Problem Solving

7 Quitting Before You're Ahead 131

The Accumulating Gifts of Percolation

8 Being Mixed Up 149

Interleaving as an Aid to Comprehension

Part 4 Tapping the Subconscious

9 Learning Without Thinking 175

Harnessing Perceptual Discrimination

10 You Snooze, You Win 195

The Consolidating Role of Sleep

Conclusion: The Foraging Brain 213

Appendix: Eleven Essential Questions 223

Acknowledgments 229

Notes 231

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

This book is a revelation. I feel as if I’ve owned a brain for fifty-four years and only now discovered the operating manual. For two centuries, psychologists and neurologists have been quietly piecing together the mysteries of mind and memory as they relate to learning and knowing. Benedict Carey serves up their most fascinating, surprising, and valuable discoveries with clarity, wit, and heart. I wish I’d read this when I was seventeen.”—Mary Roach, bestselling author of Stiff and Gulp
 
“How We Learn makes for a welcome rejoinder to the faddish notion that learning is all about the hours put in. Learners, [Benedict] Carey reminds us, are not automatons.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“The insights of How We Learn apply to far more than just academic situations. Anyone looking to learn a musical instrument would benefit from understanding what frequency and type of practice is most effective. Even readers with little practical use for Carey’s information will likely find much of it fascinating, such as how intuition can be a teachable skill, or that giving practice exams at the very beginning of a semester improves grades. How We Learn is a valuable, entertaining tool for educators, students and parents.”—Shelf Awareness

“How We Learn is more than a new approach to learning; it is a guide to making the most out of life. Who wouldn’t be interested in that?”—Scientific American
 
“Whether you struggle to remember a client’s name, aspire to learn a new language, or are a student battling to prepare for the next test, this book is a must. I know of no other source that pulls together so much of what we know about the science of memory and couples it with practical, practicable advice.”—Daniel T. Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Raising Readers in an Age of Distraction

“How We Learn is as fun to read as it is important, and as much about how to live as it is about how to learn. Benedict Carey’s skills as a writer, plus his willingness to mine his own history as a student, give the book a wonderful narrative quality that makes it all the more accessible—and all the more effective as a tutorial.”—Robert A. Bjork, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles
 
“Fact #1: Your brain is a powerful and eccentric machine, capable of performing astonishing feats of memory and skill. Fact #2: Benedict Carey has written a book that will inspire and equip you to use your brain in a more effective way. Fact #3: You should use your brain—right now—to buy this book for yourself and for anyone who wants to learn faster and better.”—Daniel Coyle, bestselling author of The Talent Code

From the Publisher

…Benedict Carey tells us to ease up, take a break, get a good night's sleep and stop the cramming. Instead of beating our brains into submission through 10,000 hours of drudgery, we need to study smarter, not harder…Ultimately, How We Learn makes for a welcome rejoinder to the faddish notion that learning is all about the hours put in.

The New York Times Book Review - Dan Hurley

05/19/2014
In this highly accessible exploration through one of our most perplexing processes, New York Times reporter Carey brings the concept of learning out of the classroom setting and into the wider world. More than just a “when, where, and why” account, Carey expands our understanding of the phenomenon to consider the “who,” encompassing individuals of all ages. Much as learning seems like a product of deliberate concentration, it can often be most fruitful when we embrace moments of distraction, and Carey relies on personal, at times tortured, anecdotes to illustrate his points. The role of memory is relevant, but not central to his study, which involves a more integrated means of remembering and forgetting. Learning does not consistently culminate in a singular goal; rather it is an ongoing process that can be traced, but not always measured. Carey admits that his science is at best imperfect, but he utilizes biology and cognitive science to structure and inform his work. His writing, personal and presented in the most understandable terms, strikes an appropriate tone. What we come to realize is that we are all learners, however different, which makes this book less about learning than it is about being comprehensively and attentively alive. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Steve Kramer narrates journalist Benedict Carey’s account of new research on the process of learning. Kramer’s well-measured pace, agreeable tone, and energy complement Carey’s accessible writing style and fascinating findings. These findings often run counter to the prevailing folk wisdom about the best way to ensure maximum absorption and retention of information. For example, varying study setting and allowing oneself some distraction should be embraced rather than avoided. As Carey explores the research and examines his own life as a student, listeners will learn some useful new tidbits to enhance their own learning processes. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2014 - AudioFile

2014-07-02
Carey (Poison Most Vial: A Mystery, 2012, etc.) choseto write scientific mysteries for kids as a distraction from his day job as ascience reporter for the New York Times, until it dawned on himthat he had an amazing story to share: Ostensibly poor study habits can beimportant to improving learning strategies.Recent experiments in cognition offer startling insightsinto how the brain works, contradicting traditional beliefs about the merits ofconcentration and self-discipline. "Distractions can aid learning," writes theauthor. "Napping does, too. Quitting before a project is done: not bad, as analmost done project lingers in memory far longer than one that is completed."Taking a break and texting or checking emails when faced with a knotty mathproblem may actually facilitate a solution. New research indicates that memoryis a two-stage process: In addition to storage, there is retrieval, which is anassociative process. What we remember from one moment to the next may not beidentical; images are embedded "in networks of perceptions, facts and thoughts,slightly different combinations of which bubble up each time." Carey describesexperiments that demonstrate the remarkable fact that if subjects are shown aseries of pictures or lines of poetry that they are asked to memorize, theirrecall will improve over several days without further practice. In the case ofa meaningless array of syllables or numbers, however, this is not the case."Forgetting is not only a passive process of decay but also an active one, offiltering," and the brain treats nonsense syllables as dispensable clutter.Forgetting is part of the mental process of fixing a memory. If we aremotivated to solve a difficult problem, our brains will take advantage of abreak to continue working "offline" while we turn our attention elsewhere.A fascinating perspective on how we can benefit from thedistractions of daily life.

Kirkus Reviews