{"id":1515,"date":"2014-05-18T13:55:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-18T17:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1515"},"modified":"2017-06-27T15:11:29","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T19:11:29","slug":"could-the-experts-be-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/05\/18\/could-the-experts-be-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Could The Experts Be Wrong?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the field of cognitive psychology, it is widely believed that testing is the best way for a person to learn. Many studies have been conducted to establish the differences in retention between initial testing and the restudying of information. These studies found that final recall has greatly supported that when people are retested they retain more of the learned information. During testing, people make meaningful connections within their minds to understand what they are learning, this allows for more comprehensive recall later on. Students are forced to process the information deeper during testing than when they are simply rereading the information. This strategy has been something that many psychologists have been trying to get implemented into school systems and teaching styles. As a student, having to be tested all the time is not something I want. I also frequently find myself questioning if it really is as beneficial as the so-called experts say. There are some things that, no matter how many times I am tested on it and how many times I study it, I am simply unable to understand. A recent study by Bridger and Mecklinger questioned the benefits of this testing idea, and found that it may only work with certain kinds of information. Their research brought to light the idea of errorful learning, which is similar to testing yourself as a study method, and errorless learning, which is more like reviewing information as a study method. They attempted to draw attention to the fact that errorful learning may not be the most beneficial strategy to long-term retention.<\/p>\n

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Think about what type of information you are most likely to be stumped by. Usually this information is in the form of questions that have only a couple options, and you just can\u2019t seem to remember which is the right one. Foreign language is a good example of this. If you\u2019re anything like me, case selection is your nemesis. Cases are frustrating, confusing, and I can never seem to get them right. That is because they are what is considered \u201chigh constraint stimulus\u201d, which means there are only a few options that could be the correct answer and they are all pretty similar. I have unintentionally made connections between the wrong cases in my mind every time I have been tested on it and given the wrong answer, and these connections seem to only get stronger over time.<\/p>\n

The things I have found I have benefitted most from being tested on connected to reading and comprehending a story or bigger topics. When I read something and then have to take a test on what I just read, I am able to make connections with that information. I have to consciously think about the information I learned and look at the whole picture and then answer the related questions. This type of stimuli is called \u201clow constraint stimulus,\u201d which is stimulus that has many options and connections. There are more connections in the mind with this type of stimuli so when you answer incorrectly the reinforcement of that answer is not particularly strong and will not make a huge impact in the long run.<\/p>\n

In Bridger and Mecklinger\u2019s study, they looked at the idea that maybe errorful learning isn\u2019t as overall beneficial as it is believed. You cannot take a test on information that you do not already know and expect for it to help you. They looked at\u00a0errorful and errorless learning<\/a>\u00a0and tried to find the strengths and weaknesses of each when it came to final recall. Errorful learning is the kind of learning, which is like guessing answers before you have learned the information. Errorless learning is when the \u201cquestion\u201d and \u201canswer\u201d are given at the same time so that no incorrect connections can be made.<\/p>\n

In the study, Bridger and Mecklinger found that errorful learning was much better with low constraint stimuli, such as reading a story and being tested on it, just as studies had shown. What the other studies never looked at though, was how poorly participants did with errorful learning and high constraint stimuli. Participants were given a prompt and then a delay in time before they were shown the correct answer. That delay gave them time to make up their own connections. Those connections that they made initially during that time delay held great pull in their mind over the correct answer. Errorless learning allowed participants to perform much better with high constraint stimuli, which would be like reading and rereading a worksheet on the case types in your foreign language. With errorless learning, incorrect connections were not being made within the smaller number of stimuli. If a mistake is made initially when you are learning a topic that is similar to something else, it is much harder to break that connection. This finding showed it is actually better not to test yourself right after learning new information that can be easily confused within a topic. Every time you accidentally say that something in the \u201cgenitive case\u201d is actually in the \u201caccusative case\u201d you are making a connection between the details of what the genitive case is and the name \u201caccusative case\u201d. Very quickly it becomes a habit to think they are connected and very hard to break the connection. It is better to work with the information in front of you so that you cannot get it wrong until you no longer have to look at it to know what the right answer is.<\/p>\n

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So next time you are studying for an exam, take a look at the kind of information you need to know. If it is information that is broad and has many connections to be made, use the self-testing method. Make yourself flashcards, take practice tests. If the information is a bit more meticulous, take the time to really learn it before you test it. Keep all the information in front of you as you practice it. Yes, testing is beneficial for learning, but it has to be done the right way, and it can\u2019t be done too early with very detail oriented information or else you could just be hurting your ability to learn it correctly in the long run.<\/p>\n

The original article can be found above under the link “errorful and errorless testing”<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/p>\n

Bridger, Emma, K., Mecklinger, Axel, (2014), “Errorful and Errorless learning: The impact of cue-target constraint in learning form errors.” Memory and Cognition. 2014.;Published: 11, March 2014. 1-9<\/p>\n

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In the field of cognitive psychology, it is widely believed that testing is the best way for a person to learn. Many studies have been conducted to establish the differences in retention between initial testing and the restudying of information. These studies found that final recall has greatly supported that when people are retested they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4728,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60348],"tags":[124,212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4728"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1515"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3685,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515\/revisions\/3685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}