DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES

Mike Griffithsm.griffiths@gold.ac.uk

Associate Lecturer(Psychology and the Graduate School)

Tapping a tune

Newton (1990)

Percentage of tunes that listeners got right

50%Percentage of tunes that tappers thought listeners would get right

5%

(Unpublished PhD thesis, cited by Bjork, 2006)

Tapping a tune: a parable for teaching

“Every beginning instructor discovers sooner or later that his first lectures were incomprehensible because he was talking to himself, so to say, mindful only of his point of view. He realises only gradually and with difficulty that it is not easy to place one’s self in the shoes of students who do not yet know about the subject matter of the course.”

Piaget (1962)

This is not (necessarily) a desirable difficulty!

So …

We don’t always know whether we are getting our message across.

But now for an even more uncomfortable thought:

Do students (or even teachers) know the best techniques for learning?

Desirable difficulties

• Are difficulties which:

• Promote cognitive engagement by the learner– i.e. make them think!

• And/or promote long term learning at the expense of short term performance– Hence, desirable difficulties may appear to

be undesirable.

Distributed practice• Baddeley & Longman (1979)• Postmen learning to type postcodes

Training per day

2 2 hours

2 1 hours

1 2 hour

1 1 hour

Mean hours to learn

50

43

43

35

Mean satisfaction (1 = high)

1.7

1.9

2.0

2.4

Intensive teaching

• In the opinion of one respected and experienced Professor:

• “It is only possible to make three main points in a one hour lecture. Five in a two hour lecture.”

(personal communication)

Interleaving vs blocking

• “Blocking”: doing the same thing repeatedly

• Interleaving: mixing things up

Rohrer and Taylor, 2007

• Learning formulas for the volume of different solids

• Blocked vs interleaved

• Correct answers:During

learningOne week

later

Blocked practice

Interleaved practice

89%

60%

20%

63%

Kornell & Bjork, 2008

• Learn the styles of 12 artists….

Kornell & Bjork, 2008

• Six examples of each artist’s work presented, with the artist’s name– 3 seconds each on a computer screen

• Either – blocked (six of artist A, six of artist B, etc) – or interleaved (all mixed up)

• Assessment: given fresh paintings and asked to say which was the artist

Kornell & Bjork, 2008

Proportion who thought they had learnt best when: Proportion who actually learnt best when:

Blocked Interleaved (same in both)

65% 21% (14%)

Proportion who actually learnt best when:

Blocked Interleaved (same in both)

16% 78% (6%)

Interleaving: Why might it work?

At least three possible explanations (Bjork and Bjork, 2011):

1.You have to resolve interference, hence you notice similarities and differences.

2.Reloading. If you do A, then B, then A, etc, you have to keep ‘reloading’ the memory for how to do A.

3.It spaces out the practice of any one thing.

Varying the conditions of learning

• Mannes & Kintsch (1987)• Learn about microbes from an article and

accompanying outline• Events:

1. Outline (order consistent or inconsistent with the article)

2. The article3. Tests

Varying the conditions of learning

Consistent-outline students did better at– cued-recall– recognition

Inconsistent-outline students did better at– inference verifications– problem-solving tasks that required deeper

understanding

Varying the conditions of learning

• Even learning the same material in different environments

• Smith, Glenberg & Bjork, 1978• Learn word lists in two environments

– Context P (on slides, in cluttered room)– Context M (tape recording, in small cubicle)

• Recalled in neutral environment

Varying the conditions of learning

Words recalledConditions

P then P 41%

M then M 39%Consistent

P then M 69%

M then P 53%Inconsistent

Making life harder for students

• “If a student has a relatively easy time learning a new lesson or concept, both the student and instructor are likely to label the session as successful even if the student is unable to retrieve the information at a later time.” [emphasis added]

• “[I]n some cases making material harder to learn can improve long-term learning and retention. More cognitive engagement leads to deeper processing, which facilitates encoding and subsequently better retrieval.”

Diemand-Yauman, Openheimer and Vaughan (2011)

Diemand-Yauman et al. (cont)

• 222 high school students aged 15-18

• Learning materials – Control condition: unchanged; or– ‘Disfluent’ condition: Made harder to read

(e.g. unusual fonts, or out of focus)– Duration: one lesson plan (1½ - 4 weeks)

• Results?

Diemand-Yauman et al. (cont)

Results• Students’ feelings (e.g. liking for the class)

• Classroom test performance

No difference between fluent and disfluent

Disfluent better

(d = 0.45, p < .001)

Tests as study events

• Which works best: reading the textbook over and over again, or testing yourself on the material?

• Familiarity with the material gives you a false sense of security

• Testing yourself (or being tested) gives more cognitive engagement

Studying vs testing• Roediger & Karpicke (2004)• Reading passages containing 30 ‘idea units’• 5 min periods: study (S) or test (T)

Mean times Ps read passage

S S S S 14.2

S S S T 10.3

S T T T 3.4

Ideas recalled5 mins

83%

78%

72%

Ideas recalled1 week

40%

56%

61%

“Many common study habits

… turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly.”

Brown, Roedeger and McDaniel (2014)

“More complex and durable learning

... Comes from

•self-testing

•introducing certain difficulties in practice,

•waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in

•and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another.”

Brown, Roedeger and McDaniel (2014); reformatted

Questions?

Further reading (1)

• Bjork, E.L and Bjork, R. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In Pew, Hough and Pomerantz (Eds): Psychology and the Real World. http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf

• Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D.M. and Vaughan, E.B. (2011). Fortune favours the bold (and the italicized): effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition 118.

Further reading (2)

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. III, McDaniel, M. A. (2104). Make it Stick: the Science of Successful Learning. London: Belknap Press. [370.1523 BR)]

(Tip: The rest is a fun read, but if you want to cut to the chase, go to the final chapter.)

Thanks also to Robert Bjork for his presentation to the Psychology Learning and Teaching Conference, 2006.

Exercises

1. What reservations or questions do you have about ‘desirable difficulties’?

2. Can you remember any occasions when ‘desirable difficulties’ have helped your own learning?