On helicopter parenting

Parental involvement can have a positive effect in their children's lives. In what some call the Authoritative Parenting Style, the relationship between parents and children are typically, "...high on warmth and moderate on control, very careful to set clear limits and restrictions regarding certain kinds of behaviors." Of the Authoritative style, further research shows that "Children tend to be friendly and to show development of general competencies for dealing with others and with their environments" (Butcher, Mineka, & Hooley, Abnormal Psychology Core Concepts, Second Edition (2011), 62).

Yet excessive parenting--sometimes called Helicopter Parenting, because of the parents' tendency to hover over everything their children do--appears to have many detrimental effects for all parties involved. That is the subject of a new study from The Journal of Child and Family Studies, and an article by Bonnie Rochman of Time.com.

In particular with adult children, Rochman says the study found "...helicopter parenting decreased adult children’s feelings of autonomy, competence and connection. In turn, feeling incompetent led to increased reports of feeling depressed and dissatisfied."

A related study by the same research group last year found that the helicopter parent experience also negatively affected parents, who often suffered exhaustion and depression as a result of their hyper-involved parenting.

The emerging picture suggests so-called "Helicopter Parenting" does no one favors. Holly Schiffrin, lead author of the study, is quoted by Rochman as saying, "'Parents are sending an unintentional message to their children that they are not competent.'" This appears to erode a child's sense of confidence, independence, and resilience. It also wreaks havoc on parents's health. To top it all, the damage seems to be more-or-less unintended; parents just want their children to succeed.

The study and article further convince me of the difficulties inherent in parenting generally. A growing child seems to need so many contrary things in hard-to-define and ever-changing measure; rules and freedom, security and uncertainty, space and guidance, and so much else. To borrow an idea from the late historian Jacques Barzun, parents seem to require a kind of "double-vision" that they may simultaneously see the contrary needs of their children from both and all angles. This is not easy, and suggests one reason many caring parents resort to helicopter style, despite its shortcomings; that it simplifies--temporarily at least--the burden of rearing and guiding an emerging adult by taking command of various aspects of the child's life. What was double-vision before thus becomes singular. A balancing-act fraught with uncertainty becomes a problem of jumping hoops and achieving benchmarks, a far more straight-forward challenge for most ambitious and driven adults.

Yet a child is neither a ship to be piloted, nor a thing to be perfected. If Rochman and Schiffrin offer any insight, it is that children need three things which helicopter parents cannot readily provide: autonomy, competence, and connection with other people. These constitute the three legs of the "Self-Determination Theory" stool, and by taking control and constantly interjecting into their children's lives, helicopter parents seem to hamper the provisioning of these three needs. Like a ship captain grooming a young sailor for command, the latter only seems to develop autonomy, competence, and connection with others by putting his or her hand to the helm and experiencing the novelty of top-command. A good captain might also know (or learn) when and how these experiences are best attained, building his or her charge's confidence, and thereby, independence. That is the idea anyway, though likely much harder in practice.

For this reason I am cautious to judge anybody put in a position of raising a child or grooming a competent, confident individual in any endeavor. The challenges they face are different yet on par perhaps with those young folks coming into their own in the world. There's much we know about how this process should work, yet like sailor who would command a ship, we may not acquire the captain's touch until we've had the helm in our own hands for a time.

Reflection: On Soft and Gentle Things

With respect to love, the Malagasy have a proverb which says:

"Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river."

In the Tao te Ching, it reads:

"Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,nothing can surpass it." -Chapter 78

From these two quotations does a notion begin to take shape; that a soft and gentle force, applied persistently, can have profound consequences. The course of a river may change little in a year, but give 10,000 years and the view is usually quite different. The force of gravity does little to prevent a person from defying it temporarily by jumping into the air, yet ask that person to defy it 10,000 times without rest, and the result is likely tired person no longer intent on jumping.

For all the ease it takes to overcome a soft force once, it is remarkable how many examples in nature show evidence of its power. Consider a cork floating in a pond. Push it under water, and it will hardly resist. Yet take away your finger, and straight to the surface it will rise. The cork will never resist, but never remains underwater for long.

If one clasps tightly to a blob of clay, it will squeeze through one's fingers and end up on the floor. If one grasps at something in water with force, the thing flows away. The harder one grasps, the faster it slides away. To carry clay or catch a thing in water, the open hand seems to work better than the tight fist.

We respect force because it hurts, but we respect gentleness because it effortlessly transforms. Frequently this idea is forgotten, or dismissed as inaccurate. I do not know whether it is a fact, but I do think enough instances in the world exist to warrant reflection from time to time.

Happy Saturday :)

A Summary/Response to Christina Boufis’ “Yes, Girls get ADHD too”

The following is adapted from a paper I wrote for Abnormal Psych Spring2013. Enjoy!

I admit, when the condition ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder) comes to mind, the first thing I imagine is the proverbial first-grade male with the energy and concentrating abilities of a humming bird. As it turns out, not only is this view shared by many in popular culture, it also misses important facets of the condition. ADHD is not just a medical name for ants-in-your-pants, nor is it necessarily predominately-male. As the following article suggests, girls get it too, and frequently they go far longer without help than their male counterparts. Much to their detriment, the popular view of ADHD tends to make us miss the signs in girls as they pass through formative years in education and maturation. 

According to the article, one of the reasons we tend to associate ADHD with males is because the signs of it tend to be more obvious in them. Dr. Harlan Gephart, a clinical professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington medical school in Seattle, is quoted as saying, “‘Of the three traits that define ADHD—hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and inattentiveness—the first two are thought to be more descriptive of boys.’” Not surprisingly, a recent national study found that “…the majority of parents and teachers perceived ADHD to be more common in boys, who they believed had more behavior problems. Almost half of teachers that participated in this study also reported that they had difficulty recognizing the signs of ADHD in girls.” A second study from Australia found that“…even when parents and teachers acknowledged the disorder in girls, they were less likely to recommend [girls] get extra assistance because they believed it wouldn't help them as much as it would boys.” It is for this reason perhaps that for girls, “…an ADHD diagnosis isn't made until middle or high school or even later, when school becomes more demanding and a girl is having trouble completing her homework, or her undiagnosed ADHD leads to depression.”

This is unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising. The research cited in the article goes some way in showing how popular perceptions not only blind us to ADHD symptoms in girls, but also compel us to believe treatment for them would be unhelpful. As a result, many girls go years without a diagnosis, potentially leaving them far behind their peers in cumulative subjects such as mathematics and science. In this respect we do both girls and society a disservice by our bias and oversight.

Yet correcting them is liable to be difficult, particularly since, as Gephart is quoted as saying, “‘The big problem with ADHD in girls is that it presents itself differently.’” As such, the example presented to us by males may not serve as a useful indicator for detecting the condition in females. A deeper and more nuanced understanding, to say nothing of a more open perspective, seems necessary to counter the prevailing notion of ADHD as a primarily male disorder with male symptoms. Preconceptions and general ideas are useful, but as this case suggests, they too have their limits.

The Utility of Depression?

The following is adapted from a paper I wrote for Abnormal Psych Spring2013. Enjoy!

Does depression have uility? At first one might think no. After all, don't the depressed frequently neglect their own well-being, their relationships with others, and contemplate such serious acts as suicide? If so, how has depression—a condition with no obvious evolutionary utility—passed through thousands of generations to continue affecting human beings today?

From this logical predicament does Jonah Lehrer of the New York Times begin his attempt at arguing yes, depression does have utility. Entitled, “Depression’s Upside,” the piece describes how new research points toward a painful, albeit useful, function for depression. Following the work of Andy Thomas (psychiatrist of the University of Virginia) and Paul Andrews (Evolutionary Psychologist of Virginia Commonwealth University), Lehrer begins by focusing on the double-edged capacity of rumination, a “…thought process which defines [depression].”

Rumination typically means to physically chew something over and over again. In this case, however, it means a kind of mental chewing of ideas in a closed loop without interruption. One might characterize it as an intense form of focus. According to Leherer, “The capacity for intense focus …relies in large part on a brain area called the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is located a few inches behind the forehead.” In addition, “Several studies [have] found an increase in brain activity (as measured indirectly by blood flow) in the VLPFC of depressed patients.” Curiously, rumination tends to make our thinking more analytical, because it “…is largely rooted in working memory, a kind of mental scratchpad that allows us to ‘work’ with all the information stuck in consciousness.” It is for this reason Thomas and Andrews have called their idea the “analytic-rumination hypothesis.”

Even more strange perhaps, some research by Andrews found that after performing an abstract-reasoning test, “…nondepressed students showed an increase in ‘depressed affect...which made people think better.’” From this Lehrer suggests that “the anatomy of focus is inseparable from the anatomy of melancholy…that depressive disorder is an extreme form of an ordinary thought process, part of the dismal machinery that draws us toward our problems.” Accordingly, we have reason to believe that the capacity for extreme focus and abstract reasoning shares links with the capacity for unremitting negative thought.

This is interesting, because it suggests two-directional causation; that depression makes us more analytical, and analytical thinking makes us more depressed. How should we take this, particularly within the context of a world which places increasingly greater value on analytic skills and reasoning? On the one hand, analysis has arguably made us better off: we live longer, communicate more widely, and understand processes in the world more completely because of it. On the other hand, we've replaced many problems of the past with those of our own time, among them technology addiction, increasing narcissism, wide-spread obesity, and a seeming collapse of personal support structures within society generally. One may argue against any one of these claims, but the point is that while analysis has solved many problems and reduced the prevalence of many superstitions, it has produced many of its own as replacements. And if the research cited by Mr. Lehrer is any indication, a world preoccupied with analysis may in some respects be a sadder one. Analytic intelligence is but one kind, and while it has its benefits it also has its costs. Wisdom and intelligence often seem akin, but perhaps not synonymous.

"A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can." -Michel de Montaigne

Paul Tough's new book, "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character"

In September of 2011 we discussed an article from the New York Times Magazine by Paul Tough, dealing with the importance of resilience and character in successful students. Entitled, "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?" the piece explores the idea that non-cognitive qualities like character, grit, and a willingness to work hard are at least as important as IQ in student (and later, adult) success.

Just over a year later, Mr. Tough has come out with a book on the subject, entitled "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character."

In a Washington Post interview this past October, Mr. Tough says these non-cognitive "skills" include, "...grit, curiosity, perseverance, conscientiousness, self-regulation, and optimism," and that while they can be taught, he doesn't "...think we yet have an ideal model for exactly how to teach them in the classroom." What we do have, he says, are schools and teachers working on ways to address the issue, such as talks and assemblies on character at Riverdale Country School (a private institution in the Bronx), and "character growth cards" the KIPP Academy in New York City. Describing these "character growth cards," Mr. Tough says:

"...a few times a year, every student at KIPP’s New York City middle schools is evaluated on all seven character strengths by each of their teachers...in practice, the character report card seemed to function more as a conversation piece than like a traditional report card...[that] In the conversations I observed, the simple fact of having this numerical assessment in front of them seemed to give parents, teachers, and students a way of talking about these important skills in a positive, non-confrontational, growth-oriented way. And that’s a rare occurrence in any school; those are often difficult conversations for teachers and parents to have. If the report card provides a vehicle for that kind of deep and collaborative discussion between parents and teachers and students, then it’s performing a valuable function."

Another element on which Mr. Tough touches is the way poverty, affluence, and stressful growth environments can have a detrimental effect on learning character. For example, the Washington Post interviewer wonders how "something like 'grit' would be seen less in children who live in poverty vs. children who don’t." Or how even children raised in affluence seem to "...have the same sorts of problems with grit, perseverance, self-regulation, optimism," as many of those growing up in poverty." To this Mr.Tough responds: 

"That’s a good point. I do think there are plenty of kids in poverty who have lots of grit – arguably more than the average well-off kid. But the problem with focusing too much on the resilience and grit of disadvantaged kids is that we run the risk of minimizing the often quite harmful consequences of growing up in poverty. Some children do become more resilient as a result of growing up in difficult environments – but many others are simply worn down and worn out by the experience. (That’s especially true for disadvantaged children who grow up without a close and supportive relationship with a nurturing adult.)"

With respect to difficulties for children in affluent communities: 

"That said, you’re quite right that kids who grow up in affluence face their own set of challenges in the realm of character. Madeline Levine and I both draw on the work of Suniya Luthar, a psychologist at Columbia University who has studied affluent children in depth. Luthar found significant psychological problems at the high end of the income spectrum, and in fact in one study she found higher rates of depression and substance abuse in high-income adolescents than low-income adolescents. These problems arise most often in those high-income homes where children feel simultaneously a great pressure to achieve and an emotional distance from their parents – a particularly toxic combination, according to Luthar and Levine."

So in short, both ends of the poverty-affluence spectrum can prove either helpful or harmful for "character" development. Challenge, feedback, and support all seem to be integral pieces of the "grit" puzzle, and Mr. Tough's book broadens our understanding of how interventions are improving practice in formal and informal education settings to that end. Sounds like an interesting read.

Happy Saturday, friends :)

10 Study Methods considered: A summary and reflection on "Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology"

I recently uncovered an interesting monograph entitled, "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques, Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology," by John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham. In it they assess 10 study methods, rating their utility either "low," "moderate," or "high." It's an interesting piece, first summarized by Annie Murphy Paul of Time.com last week. What follows is my own attempt at summary, which may or may not prove useful. If you have the time and inclination, I encourage you to give the work a read, particularly since the devil really is in the details with this stuff. So without further pause, let's jump in. 

1. Elaborative Interrogation

Elaborative interrogation involves answering the question "why?" about a topic. Says the paper, "The key to elaborative interrogation involves prompting learners to generate an explanation for an explicitly stated fact."

On how it works, the paper states, "The prevailing theoretical account of elaborative-interrogation effects is that elaborative interrogation enhances learning by supporting the integration of new information with existing prior knowledge...Although the integration of new facts with prior knowledge may facilitate the organization (Hunt, 2006) of that information, organization alone is not sufficient—students must also be able to discriminate among related facts to be accurate when identifying or using the learned information (Hunt, 2006)."

Be that as it may, it's unclear how wide an application elaborative interrogation can have, which according to the paper, is limited, "to discrete factual statements." Also it would appear that background learning affects the efficacy of elaborative interrofation, in that "Both correlational and experimental evidence suggest that prior knowledge is an important moderator of elaborative-interrogation effects, such that effects generally increase as prior knowledge increases."

Thus, "...the overall conclusion that emerges from the literature is that high-knowledge learners will generally be best equipped to profit from the elaborative-interrogation technique. The benefit for lower-knowledge learners is less certain."

The paper gives elaborative interrogation a rating of moderate utility. "Elaborative-interrogation effects have been shown across a relatively broad range of factual topics, although some concerns remain about the applicability of elaborative interrogation to material that is lengthier or more complex than fact lists. Concerning learner characteristics, effects of elaborative interrogation have been consistently documented for learners at least as young as upper elementary age, but some evidence suggests that the benefits of elaborative interrogation may be limited for learners with low levels of domain knowledge. Concerning criterion tasks, elaborative-interrogation effects have been firmly established on measures of associative memory administered after short delays, but firm conclusions about the extent to which elaborative interrogation benefits comprehension or the extent to which elaborative-interrogation effects persist across longer delays await further research."

2. Self Explanation

Says the paper, "...the core component of self-explanation involves having students explain some aspect of their processing during learning. Consistent with basic theoretical assumptions about the related technique of elaborative interrogation, self-explanation may enhance learning by supporting the integration of new information with existing prior knowledge." 

With respect to application, "Self-explanation has also been shown to facilitate the solving of various kinds of math problems, including simple addition problems for kindergartners, mathematical-equivalence problems for elementary-age students, and algebraic formulas and geometric theorems for older learners...broadly applicable"

It is unclear how long the benefits of knowledge obtained through self explanation lasts. Further, it has been suggested that some students benefit from instruction on how to develop useful explanations, particularly those without a natural knack at it. 

The paper rates self explanation as having moderate utility, in that it is widely applicable across a wide age range, but it remains unclear how durable such gains are. Furthermore, students with a poor natural capacity for developing explanations may require additional help to make the technique work.

3. Summarization    

According to the paper, "Successful summaries identify the main points of a text and capture the gist of it while excluding unimportant or repetitive material (A. L. Brown, Campione, & Day, 1981)."

Comparing summarization and note-taking to mere copying of quotations, it was found the former group performed better, for while, "Students in the verbatim-copying group still had to locate the most important information in the text...they did not synthesize it into a summary or rephrase it in their notes. Thus, writing about the important points in one’s own words produced a benefit over and above that of selecting important information." 

It is difficult, however, to assess the actual efficacy of summarization, because, "'summarization is not one strategy but a family of strategies” (Pressley, Johnson, Symons, McGoldrick, & Kurita, 1989, p. 5).'" "Depending on the particular instructions given, students’ summaries might consist of single words, sentences, or longer paragraphs; be limited in length or not; capture an entire text or only a portion of it; be written or spoken aloud; or be produced from memory or with the text present." So summarization appears to work, but it's not entirely clear how it can be optimally done. 

Consider, the study by Bednall and Kehoe (2011, Experiment 2) found that summarization alone did not yield better performance on tests. Rather, it found a correlation between the quality of the summary (getting the key facts correct, and linking those facts to prior knowledge) and later performance. So a summary can be effective if it actually captures the essence of the matter at hand. 

In addition, it's unclear whether short, simple summaries are better than more detailed summaries that capture more of the actual text. It also appears that prior knowledge, writing skills, and instruction in making better summaries improves the effects of summarization.

In sum, the paper deemed summarization as a low utility technique, primarily because it relies on an accurate assessment of important details, a fact which tends to get better with age and further training. As a result, younger students and those not adept at summarizing have a hard time benefiting from the technique, and might be better served by the use of another.

4. Highlighting and Underlining

Highlighting and underlining are among the most common study techniques used by students for improving learning, yet it turns out they are among the least effective methods to such ends. They "typically appeal to students because they are simple to use, do not entail training, and do not require students to invest much time beyond what is already required for reading the material." Interestingly, "Students are more likely to remember things that the experimenter highlighted or underlined in the text." It is believed this due to the "isolation effect," which holds that when presented with a list of related objects (pen, pencil, quill, etc.), inserting an unrelated object (frog) increases the likelihood that the student will remember it. "The analogy to highlighting," says the paper, "is that a highlighted, underlined, or capitalized sentence will 'pop out' of the text in the same way" as the word "frog" did in the list of writing implements. 

Furthermore, "Marking too much text is likely to have multiple consequences. First, overmarking reduces the degree to which marked text is distinguished from other text, and people are less likely to remember marked text if it is not distinctive (Lorch, Lorch, & Klusewitz, 1995). Second, it likely takes less processing to mark a lot of text than to single out the most important details." Limiting the amount one can highlight (for example, one sentence per paragraph), did show some benefit.

Highlighting was deemed by the paper to be of low utility, because it, "...does little to boost performance," and "...may actually hurt performance on higher-level tasks that require inference making." More effective highlighting of key points may improve the technique's utility, but that remains unclear.
5.Keyword mnemonic 

The Keyword mnemonic technique involves the construction of interactive mental imagery in such a way that the image triggers a memory. For example, as a way of remembering that la dent in French means "tooth" in English, one might imagine a dentist holding a tooth. The similarity between dent and "dentist" can facilitate the memory that la dent in English means "tooth." In the Raugh and Atkinson (1975) study, which involved learning Spanish vocabulary terms, it was found the construction of such images improved learning over simply studying the Spanish and their English translation. 

The paper goes on to say, "The benefits of the keyword mnemonic generalize to many different kinds of material: (a) foreign-language vocabulary from a variety of languages (French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish, and Tagalog); (b) the definitions of obscure English vocabulary words and science terms; (c) state-capital associations (e.g., Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska); (d) medical terminology; (e) people’s names and accomplishments or occupations; and (f) minerals and their attributes (e.g., the mineral wolframite is soft, dark in color, and used in the home). Equally impressive, the keyword mnemonic has also been shown to benefit learners of different ages (from second graders to college students) and students with learning disabilities (for a review, see Jitendra, Edwards, Sacks, & Jacobson, 2004)."

However, "Proponents of the keyword mnemonic do acknowledge that its benefits may be limited to keyword-friendly materials (e.g., concrete nouns), and in fact, the vast majority of the research on the keyword mnemonic has involved materials that afforded its use." Furthermore, "Few studies have directly examined whether students can successfully generate their own keywords, and those that have have offered mixed results."

The paper rates the technique as having low utility. "It does show promise for keyword-friendly materials, but it is not highly efficient (in terms of time needed for training and keyword generation), and it may not produce durable learning."

6. Imagery use for text learning

Imagery use involves the conversion of text into mental images. As measured in some studies, there are,"...significant benefits of imagery use on measures involving the recall or summarization of text information (e.g., Kulhavy & Swenson, 1975), but... educed or nonexistent benefits on comprehension tests and on criterion tests that require application of the knowledge (Gagne & Memory, 1978; Miccinati, 1982)." As a result, the paper gives imagery use a rating of low utility, stating, "...the benefits of imagery are largely constrained to imagery-friendly materials and to tests of memory, and further demonstrations of the effectiveness of the technique (across different criterion tests and educationally relevant retention intervals) are needed.

7. Rereading 

Like highlighting, rereading is one of the most reported study techniques employed. As its name implies, it involves learning by reading the material under study multiple times. According to the paper, several studies--Bromage & Mayer, 1986; Kiewra, Mayer, Christensen, Kim, & Risch, 1991; Rawson & Kintsch, 2005)--suggest rereading shows, "...greater improvement in the recall of main ideas than in the recall of details." Furthermore, "Spaced rereading" (involving an interval of time between the first reading and the next) appears to have a greater benefit than "Massed reading," which involves no significant delay between readings.

The paper designates rereading as having a "low" utility. "Although benefits from rereading have been shown across a relatively wide range of text materials, the generality of rereading effects across the other categories of variables in Table 2 has not been well established." 

"Concerning criterion tasks, the effects of rereading do appear to be durable across at least modest delays when rereading is spaced. However, most effects have been shown with recall-based memory measures, whereas the benefit for comprehension is less clear. Finally, although rereading is relatively economical with respect to time demands and training requirements when compared with some other learning techniques, rereading is also typically much less effective. The relative disadvantage of rereading to other techniques is the largest strike against rereading and is the factor that weighed most heavily in our decision to assign it a rating of low utility."

8. Practice Testing

For over a hundred years (Abbott 1909), it has been known that practice testing, "...enhances learning and retention." Practice testing can include, "...actual or virtual flashcards, completing practice problems or questions included at the end of textbook chapters, or completing practice tests included in the electronic supplemental materials that increasingly accompany textbooks." Why practice testing works tends to fall under two categories: direct effects ("changes in learning that arise from the act of taking a test itself"), and mediated effects ("...learning that arise from an influence of testing on the amount or kind of encoding that takes place after the test (e.g., during a subsequent restudy opportunity))." 

Both effects appear to alter the ways in which information is organized and retrieved. Regarding direct effects for example, "Carpenter (2009) recently proposed that testing can enhance retention by triggering elaborative retrieval processes. Attempting to retrieve target information involves a search of long-term memory that activates related information, and this activated information may then be encoded along with the retrieved target, forming an elaborated trace that affords multiple pathways to facilitate later access to that information." Similar explanations are given by Pyc and Rawson (2010, 2012b) with respect to the mediated effects of practice testing. The evidence each case showed greater performance for practice testing than for mere studying.

Regarding the most efficient way to employ practice testing:

"Several studies have increased the number of tests presented in immediate succession within a session and have found minimal or nonexistent effects, in contrast to the sizable benefits observed when repeated tests are spaced (e.g.,Carpenter & DeLosh, 2005; Cull, 2000; Glover, 1989; Karpicke & Bauernschmidt, 2011). Concerning the time intervals involved with spacing, longer is better. Repeated practice testing produces greater benefits when lags between trials within a session are longer rather than shorter (e.g., Pashler, Zarow, & Triplett, 2003; Pavlik & Anderson, 2005; Pyc & Rawson, 2009, 2012b), when trials are completed in different practice sessions rather than all in the same session (e.g., Bahrick, 1979; Bahrick & Hall, 2005; Kornell, 2009; Rohrer, 2009; Rohrer & Taylor, 2006), and when intervals between practice sessions are longer rather than shorter (Bahrick et al., 1993;Carpenter, Pashler, & Cepeda, 2009, although the optimal lag between sessions may depend on retention interval—see Cepeda et al., 2009; Cepeda, Vul, Rohrer, Wixted, & Pashler, 2008)."

Furthermore, an important aspect of practice testing involves feedback, and substitution of incorrect answers for correct information. "Practice testing with feedback also consistently outperforms practice testing alone."

The paper gives practice testing a high utility: 

"Testing effects have been demonstrated across an impressive range of practice-test formats, kinds of material, learner ages, outcome measures, and retention intervals. Thus, practice testing has broad applicability. Practice testing is not particularly time intensive relative to other techniques, and it can be implemented with minimal training. Finally, several studies have provided evidence for the efficacy of practice testing in representative educational contexts."

9. Distributed Practice

Distributed Practice involves practice sessions at an interval. It is based on the Distributed-Practice Effect, which, "...refers to the finding that distributing learning over time (either within a single study session or across sessions) typically benefits long-term retention more than does massing learning opportunities back-to-back or in relatively close succession."

It's unclear why distributed practice works, but several theories offer explanations. They range from suggesting that unspaced study sessions lead students to believe they know material better than they actually do, while another holds that the second session simply reinforces the progress of the first session. Says the paper, "Given the relatively large magnitude of distributed-practice effects, it is plausible that multiple mechanisms may contribute to them; hence, particular theories often invoke different combinations of mechanisms to explain the effects."

Importantly, "Distributed practice refers to a particular schedule of learning episodes, as opposed to a particular kind of learning episode. That is, the distributed-practice effect refers to better learning when learning episodes are spread out in time than when they occur in close succession, but those learning episodes could involve restudying material, retrieving information from memory, or practicing skills." As such, distributed practice is not a study technique per say, but rather a method of organizing the resource of time. It doesn't offer explicit insight into what we should do when trying to learn, only that we'll do better if our sessions are spaced and not done all at once (as is common when "cramming" for exams). While an optimal interval length is suggested in some studies, a general rule of thumb appears to be that the longer one wishes to retain information, the longer should be the intervals between practice. 

The paper gives distributed practice a high utility rating. "It works across students of different ages, with a wide variety of materials, on the majority of standard laboratory measures, and over long delays. It is easy to implement (although it may require some training) and has been used successfully in a number of classroom studies."

10. Interleaved Practice

A less-investigated study method is called Interleaved practice, "...in which students alternate their practice of different kinds of items or problems." The paper uses the study of Rohrer and Taylor (2007) to describe how the method can be used in practice. The study involved teaching students how to find the volume of four solid figures: 

"Students had two practice sessions, which were separated by 1 week. During each practice session, students were given tutorials on how to find the volume for four different kinds of geometric solids and completed 16 practice problems (4 for each solid). After the completion of each practice problem, the correct solution was shown for 10 seconds. Students in a blocked-practice condition first read a tutorial on finding the volume of a given solid, which was immediately followed by the four practice problems for that kind of solid. Practice solving volumes for a given solid was then followed by the tutorial and practice problems for the next kind of solid, and so on. Students in an interleaved-practice group first read all four tutorials and then completed all the practice problems, with the constraint that every set of four consecutive problems included one problem for each of the four kinds of solids. One week after the second practice session, all students took a criterion test in which they solved two novel problems for each of the four kinds of solids. Students’ percentages of correct responses during the practice sessions and during the criterion test are presented in Figure 13, which illustrates a typical interleaving effect: During practice, performance was better with blocked practice than interleaved practice, but this advantage dramatically reversed on the criterion test, such that interleaved practice boosted accuracy by 43%."

Why this occurs is not definitively known, but according to the paper a "discriminative-contrast hypothesis" is likely at work. By interleaving the types of problems encountered at once, students did not attain the short-term procedural competency of solving specific problems (as with block practice). But they did learn how to discriminate between types of problems, which appears to have provided greater benefits in actual real-life situations (for example, on the criterion test). This explanation is strengthened by the study of Kang and Pashler (2012), in which college students studied the work of artists in either blocked sessions of a single artist's style, or interleaved sessions of studying multiple artists' styles (another group employed blocked sessions, but had a cartoon appear between paintings). The results: 

"Criterion performance was best after interleaved practice and was significantly better than after either standard or temporally spaced blocked practice. No differences occurred in performance between the two blocked-practice groups, which indicates that spacing alone will not consistently benefit concept formation."

As hinted at above, it is believed the interleaved method worked most effectively because it showed the contrasts between various artists' styles. As a result, when faced with a painting of a particular artist, a student from the interleaved practice would be more likely to discriminate between varying styles.

The paper gives interleaved practice a rating of moderate utility. "On the positive side, interleaved practice has been shown to have relatively dramatic effects on students’ learning and retention of mathematical skills, and teachers and students should consider adopting it in the appropriate contexts. Also, interleaving does help (and rarely hinders) other kinds of cognitive skills. On the negative side, the literature on interleaved practice is currently small, but it contains enough null effects to raise concern. Although the null effects may indicate that the technique does not consistently work well, they may instead reflect that we do not fully understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of interleaving and therefore do not always use it appropriately."

Conclusion:

I found it interesting how some study techniques--even ones commonly employed like rereading and highlighting (both methods I use!)--are not as effective as others, in some cases dramatically so. Another interesting point involves how some techniques help with certain types of questions or assessment, but not with others. Accordingly, it isn't just a matter of which technique is "better" or "worse" than other, but rather which is more effective with a certain end in mind. In general, practice testing at an interval on a variety of topics appears to yield the optimal result, but for those skilled at summary and elaborative interrogation, those methods may also have utility. In the end, I suspect each of us must find what techniques work best for us. It can be helpful though, to know what the science currently says on the matter.

Happy Tuesday, friends :)

On perspective in difficult times

We've all had our triumphs, setbacks, and full-out defeats. Some days we revel in victory, and others we march the heavy plod of the hopeless, directionless wanderer. Up and down our feelings go, for some folks more and others less, emotions flowing this way and that. Perhaps you know the feeling, or experience it so mildly that its motion hardly registers.

A common theme on this blog is that while triumphs are sweet, setbacks and failures are the painful roads on which many of life's great fruits are achieved. The way is not easy, but time and again history has shown the critical role failure has played in the development of people whose example reveal how far a person can actually come in this life. When you read the biographies of eminent (and not so eminent) historical figures, it becomes plain that none of them knew exactly where their lives would lead, or what things they would ultimately go on to achieve and do. Their dreams as youngsters often changed, and many suffered persecution, ridicule, and personal setback throughout their lives. Consider, Henry Clay (1777-1852) ran for President of the United States three times, and lost every time. Yet in 1957 a special Senate committee selected him as one of the five greatest Senators in US history (source). The French essayist (and inventor of the "essay" as we know it) Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) spent his early professional career as an obscure lawyer in Bordeaux, retiring at the age of 38 to "spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out." Yet it was during this stage of his life that he wrote the "Essays" for which he is most famous, traveled  for years across Europe, and served two successful terms as the governor of Bordeaux. He also happened to have the ear of the new new king, Henry IV. Talk about a busy retirement.

The point is, even the most discussed figures in human history have had about as much an idea of where their lives would go as everyone else. They strove and toiled and sifted through the same kinds of uncertainty and everyday misadventures which visit the vast majority of everyone who steps out their door. Speaking of which, while the tale is fiction, it was not until Bilbo Baggins stepped out his door and entered the messy world of Middle-Earth-beyond-the-Shire that he became the jolly, elvish-speaking, song writer so many have come to love. Yet there were many moments on his adventure when everything could have ended. But Bilbo made it through, and looking back he seems to have managed even to have a laugh at all the silly situations which at the time probably seemed quite serious, perhaps even deadly.

Which brings us to a piece of advice I heard the other day; namely, that when assessing a problem you're having test it with the statement "in five years time, will any of this actually matter?" Just that. Are the problems you feel today so serious that five years from now they will continue to have  significant bearing on your life? If they do, then perhaps the stress and turmoil you feel has merit, because without some resolution or change in approach the problem isn't going away quickly. On the other hand, if the issue is one that in five years won't matter in the least, then is it really worth the aggravation and concern you currently feel? That can be both an easy and difficult question to answer, because after all, it requires a capacity to imagine how you might think five years from now. Given the uncertainty we've been discussing, it's no surprise this is sometimes very difficult. How can we know? And what if we judge unwisely?

These are questions I can't answer. But I suspect that if we bear the central question stated above in mind-- that in five years time, will any of this actually matter?--then perhaps our sense of what is important and less important can become evermore refined to the particulars of each success, setback, and failure we experience. With time, perhaps we can hone our judgment to see with clearer eyes those things which in the long run tend to help our situation, and what either hinders or detracts from it those more wholesome thoughts, feelings, and experiences that leave us happy five years from now. We can't know with certainty, but we might get better with a little honest reflection.

So what do you think? In five years time, will all the nonsense, frustration, and negative feelings in your life today matter a lick? Something to consider maybe.

Happy Sunday, friends :)