Chapter 4 - Embrace Difficulties

Question 1

What are desirable difficulties?

Answer 1

Short term impediments that lead to stronger learning.

Question 2

What is encoding?

Answer 2

The process of converting sensory perceptions into meaningful representations (memory traces) in the brain.

Question 3

What is consolidation?

Answer 3

The process of strengthening mental representations (memory traces) into long term memory.

Question 4

What is the benefit of letting the memory/learning recede a little?

Answer 4

Retrieval is harder, your performance is weaker, you will feel let down, but your learning is deeper and you will retrieve it more easily in the future.

Question 5

What does durable robust learning require?

Answer 5

1. We must recode and consolidate new material from short term memory into long term memory.
2. We must associate the material with a diverse set of cues that will make us adept at recalling the knowledge later.

Question 6

When is knowledge durable?

Answer 6

1. Deeply entrenched - when you firmly and thoroughly understand a concept.
2. It has practical importance or keen emotional weight in your life.
3. It is connected to with other knowledge that you hold in memory.

Question 7

What makes knowledge readily recallable?

Answer 7

1. Context
2. Recency of Use
3. Number and vividness of cues that you have linked to the cues that you can call on to bring forth.

Question 8

What is the paradox of desirable difficulties?

Answer 8

The more effort required to retrieve something the better you learn it.

Question 9

What is effortful recall?

Answer 9

When you reconstruct the construct the components of the skill or the material from long term memory.

Question 10

What leads to deeper learning?

Answer 10

The effortful process of reconstructing the knowledge that triggers reconsolidation and deeper learning.

Question 11

What are mental models?

Answer 11

1. Forms of deeply entrenched and highly efficient skills.
2. Knowledge structures (a series of chess moves) that can be adapted and applied in a variety of different circumstances.

Question 12

What are some other strategies that incorporate desirable difficulties?

Answer 12

1. Generation - generating the answer rather then recalling it
2. Reflection -

Question 13

What are the three steps involved in learning?

Answer 13

1. Encoding - encoding information in short-term memory by consolidating it in long-term memory.
2. Consolidation - reorganizes and stabilizes memory traces by giving them meaning and connecting them to past experiences and other information in long term memory.
3. Retrieval - updates learning and enables you to apply it when you need it.

Question 14

What is the key to recalling what you know?

Answer 14

1. Repeated use

2. Establishing strong retrieval cues

Question 15

What are the benefits of repeated effortful recall?

Answer 15

1. Strengthens the memory and makes it pliable again leading to reconsolidation.
2. Reconsolidation helps you update your memories with new information and connect them to more recent learning.
3. Mental models - a set of interrelated ideas fused into a meaningful whole that can be applied later
4. Discrimination and induction -