Learning is at least a three- step pro cess: initial encoding of information is held in short- term working memory before being consolidated into a cohesive repre sen ta tion of knowledge in long- term memory. Consolidation reorganizes and stabilizes memory traces, gives them meaning, and makes connections to past experiences and to other knowledge already stored in long- term memory. Retrieval updates learning and enables you to apply it when you need it.
Learning always builds on a store of prior knowledge. We interpret and remember events by building connections to what we already know.
Long- term memory capacity is virtually limitless: the more you know, the more possible connections you have for adding new knowledge.
Because of the vast capacity of long- term memory, having the ability to locate and recall what you know when you need it is key; your facility for calling up what you know depends on the repeated use of the information (to keep retrieval routes strong) and on your establishing powerful retrieval cues that can reactivate the memories.
Periodic retrieval of learning helps strengthen connections to the memory and the cues for recalling it, while also weakening routes to competing memories. Retrieval practice that’s easy does little to strengthen learning; the more diffi cult the practice, the greater the benefi t.
When you recall learning from short- term memory, as in rapid- fi re practice, little mental effort is required, and little long- term benefi t accrues. But when you recall it after some time has elapsed and your grasp of it has become a little rusty, you have to make an effort to reconstruct it. This effortful retrieval both strengthens the memory but also makes the
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learning pliable again, leading to its reconsolidation. Reconsolidation helps update your memories with new information and connect them to more recent learning.
Repeated effortful recall or practice helps integrate learning into mental models, in which a set of interrelated ideas or a sequence of motor skills are fused into a meaningful whole that can be adapted and applied in later settings. Examples are the perceptions and manipulations involved in driving a car or in knocking a curveball out of the ballpark.
When practice conditions are varied or retrieval is interleaved with the practice of other material, we increase our abilities of discrimination and induction and the versatility with which we can apply the learning in new settings at a later date. Interleaving and variation build new connections, expanding and more fi rmly entrenching knowledge in memory and increasing the number of cues for retrieval.
Trying to come up with an answer rather than having it presented to you, or trying to solve a problem before being shown the solution, leads to better learning and longer retention of the correct answer or solution, even when your attempted response is wrong, so long as corrective feedback is provided.
5
Avoid Illusions of Knowing
At the root of our effectiveness is our ability to grasp the world around us and to take the mea sure of our own per for mance. We’re constantly making judgments about what we know and don’t know and whether we’re capable of handling a task or solving a problem. As we work at something, we keep an eye on ourselves, adjusting our thinking or actions as we progress.
Monitoring your own thinking is what psychologists call metacognition ( meta is Greek for “about”). Learning to be accurate self- observers helps us to stay out of blind alleys, make good decisions, and refl ect on how we might do better next time. An important part of this skill is being sensitive to the ways we can delude ourselves. One problem with poor judgment is that we usually don’t know when we’ve got it.
Another problem is the sheer scope of the ways our judgment can be led astray.1
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In this chapter we discuss perceptual illusions, cognitive biases, and distortions of memory that commonly mislead people. Then we suggest techniques for keeping your judgment squared with reality.
The consequences of poor judgment fi ll the daily papers.
During the summer of 2008, three stickup artists in Minneapolis had a system going of phoning in large fast- food orders and then relieving the delivery man of all the goods and cash he carried. As a livelihood it was a model of simplicity. They kept at it, failing to consider the wisdom of always placing their orders from the same two cell phones and taking delivery at the same two addresses.
David Garman, a Minneapolis cop, was working undercover that summer. “It was getting more aggressive. At the beginning, it was ‘maybe they had a gun,’ then all of a sudden there were a couple of guns, and then they were hurting the people when they were robbing them.”
It was a night in August when Garman got a call about a large order phoned in to a Chinese restaurant. He or ga nized a small team on short notice and prepared to pose as the delivery guy. He pulled on a bulletproof vest, covered it with a casual shirt, and shoved his .45 automatic into his pants. While his colleagues staked out positions near the delivery address, Garman picked up the food, drove there, and parked with his brights shining on the front door. He’d cut a slit in the bottom of the food bag and tucked a .38 inside to rest in his hand as he carried the package. “The .38 has a covered hammer on it, so I can shoot it in a bag. If I were to put the automatic in there, it’d jam and I’d be screwed.”
So I walk up with the package and I say, “Hey, sir, did you order some food?” He says, “Yup,” and I’m thinking this guy’s really just going to pay me and I’m going to be out of here,
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and this is going to be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done. I’m thinking if he hands me $40, I don’t even know how much this food is. But he turns his head to look halfway back and two other guys start to come up, and as they’re walking towards me they fl ip hoods over their heads. That’s when I know it’s game time. The fi rst guy whips a gun out of his pocket and racks it and puts it to my head all in one motion, saying, “Give me everything you’ve got motherfucker or I’ll kill you.” I ended up shooting him through the bag. It was four rounds.2
Not such a great livelihood after all. The guy was hit low and survived, although he is a lesser man as a result. Garman would have aimed higher if the food package hadn’t been so heavy, and he took a lesson from the experience: he’s better prepared for the next time, though he’d rather we didn’t describe just how.
We like to think we’re smarter than the average doodle, and even if we’re not, we feel affi rmed in this delusion each year when the newest crop of Darwin Awards circulates by email, that short list of self- infl icted fatalities caused by spec-tacularly poor judgment, as in the case of the attorney in Toronto who was demonstrating the strength of the windows in his twenty- two- story offi ce tower by throwing his shoulder against the glass when he broke it and fell through. The truth is that we’re all hardwired to make errors in judgment. Good judgment is a skill one must acquire, becoming an astute observer of one’s own thinking and per for mance. We start at a disadvantage for several reasons. One is that when we’re incompetent, we tend to overestimate our competence and see little reason to change. Another is that, as humans, we are readily misled by illusions, cognitive biases, and the stories we construct to explain the world around us and our place within
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it. To become more competent, or even expert, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and fi nd objective ways to track our progress.
Two Systems of Knowing
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes our two analytic systems. What he calls System 1 (or the automatic system) is unconscious, intuitive, and immediate. It draws on our senses and memories to size up a situation in the blink of an eye. It’s the running back dodging tackles in his dash for the end zone. It’s the Minneapolis cop, walking up to a driver he’s pulled over on a chilly day, taking evasive action even before he’s fully aware that his eye has seen a bead of sweat run down the driver’s temple.
System 2 (the controlled system) is our slower pro cess of conscious analysis and reasoning. It’s the part of thinking that considers choices, makes decisions, and exerts self- control.
We also use it to train System 1 to recognize and respond to par tic u lar situations that demand refl exive action. The running back is using System 2 when he walks through the moves in his playbook. The cop is using it when he practices taking a gun from a shooter. The neurosurgeon is using it when he rehearses his repair of the torn sinus.
System 1 is automatic and deeply infl uential, but it is susceptible to illusion, and you depend on System 2 to help you manage yourself: by checking your impulses, planning ahead, identifying choices, thinking through their implications, and staying in charge of your actions. When a guy in a restaurant walks past a mother with an infant and the infant cries out
“Dada!” that’s System 1. When the blushing mother says,
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“No, dear, that’s not Dada, that’s a man, ” she is acting as a surrogate System 2, helping the infant refi ne her System 1.
System 1 is powerful because it draws on our accumulated years of experience and our deep emotions. System 1 gives us the survival refl ex in moments of danger, and the astonishing deftness earned through thousands of hours of deliberate practice in a chosen fi eld of expertise. In the interplay between Systems 1 and 2— the topic of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink— your instantaneous ability to size up a situation plays against your capacity for skepticism and thoughtful analysis. Of course, when System 1’s conclusions arise out of misperception or illusion, they can steer you into trouble.
Learning when to trust your intuition and when to question it is a big part of how you improve your competence in the world at large and in any fi eld where you want to be expert.
