Chapter 3

Promoting quality learning by knowing your limits

Smart Thinking — Art Markman, PhD

• The mind imposes limits when perceiving and thinking about the world.
• The mind may limit what you can remember about past events.
• Use your awareness of these limits to improve the quality of your knowledge.

Change blindness

Even though you believe that you are seeing everything that is happening, you may fail to notice rather large changes in the environment. This phenomenon is called change blindness. Change blindness occurs because the system that processes visual information assumes the world is stable and predictable. We rightly believe that objects in the world will not suddenly change their identity. So, we accept and operate under the premise that the mind doesn’t need to keep track of every detail about the objects in our environment, such as specific information about what things look like or exactly where they are located. As a result, we do not notice changes in appearance or location unless they are somehow crucial for the task we are doing at that moment.

What you see depends on what you know

At any given time, what you see is a combination of the light bouncing off surfaces in the world and your existing knowledge that tells you where to look next and how to interpret what you are seeing. Psychologists call simple visual information like the colors, shapes, and sizes of objects “low-level information” and conceptual information “high-level information.” I call the information that the eyes gather from the visual world itself bottom-up seeing because vision is using the low-level information available from the world. I call the use of existing knowledge about the world top-down seeing because vision is being guided by existing high-level knowledge.

Top-down seeing plays an important role in the way we gather new information. From the moment we open our eyes, we are being guided in part by what we know already. As a result, we are most likely to acquire new information that is related to the way we think the world works.

• Auditory Loop:

The phenomenon of change blindness in vision suggests that you hold onto information about the visual world for hardly more than a fraction of a second. For sounds, you can remember about three seconds’ worth of information in a type of memory called an auditory loop. This auditory loop is important for helping you remember the last few words when trying to understand a sentence.

You also learn to take advantage of the auditory loop to help you remember things. If you have a short list or a phone number to remember, you will probably repeat it to yourself as if you were hearing it in your mind’s ear.

Working Memory

Another limitation on how much you can think about at any given moment comes from the concept of working memory, which refers to the amount of information that you can hold in your mind at once while you are thinking about something.

Working memory is not a separate place in your brain where you put knowledge that you are using while thinking. Instead, it is a reflection of the information that you can access. You have a vast warehouse of knowledge, but only a little of it is important at any given moment, and so your mind gives you access to only a fraction of what you know.

• Two principles that help develop High-Quality knowledge:
• Despite the richness of the world around you, only a small amount of information from the world makes it into your mind for further processing and only a small amount of the vast store of knowledge that you have is available at any given time to influence what you are thinking about.
• The process of taking in information requires a combination of bottom-up processing, which extracts the information from the world using the senses, and top-down processing, which allows your prior knowledge to influence what you perceive and remember.

What you know depends on what you see

There are two lessons you can draw from top-down processing:

• First, you have to remember that the way you experience anything new, whether it is an event or a problem, will be affected by the way you have seen things in the past. So sometimes when you get stuck on a problem you are trying to solve, it may be that your previous experience with related problems has led you to describe that problem in the wrong way.
• Second, because you use your existing knowledge to interpret new events, the easiest new things for you to learn are those that are connected to what you have encountered in the past. Your knowledge is not a collection of disconnected facts. It is a web of connections among pieces of information. This web is built up starting with the connection between existing knowledge and the way you sense the world.

Having High-Quality Knowledge, then, is not just about learning things in isolation, it is about learning the connections among things. Because you use your knowledge to help you understand new situations, you want to have good connections that enable you to bring important information to mind when you are likely to need it. Ultimately, your memory wants to provide you with the information you are most likely to need when doing something. As a result, only a small portion of the huge volume of knowledge you have is available to you at any moment. The information that is most likely to be in your working memory when you are doing something is the knowledge that is somehow connected to your previous experiences that relate to that activity. Then when you learn new things, you try to connect the new information to whatever is in your working memory.

Remembering names

• When you are being introduced to someone, pay attention.

• Try to turn his name into something that is related to the person.

Find some aspect of the person—his eyes or hair or smile—try to relate his name to it. You will do a better job of remembering the name if you can relate it to something about the person.

• Use the person’s name in conversation as quickly as possible after hearing it.

Try to work it into the conversation a couple of times. It will feel a little awkward to do that, because she is standing right there, but if you do, you’ll be amazed at how much better you become at remembering the names of new people.

• Remember that everyone has trouble remembering other people’s names. So when you are talking to someone whose name you’ve forgotten, just apologize and ask him to repeat his name. Chances are he will be flattered that you cared enough to ask again. He is also likely to be relieved, because he has probably forgotten your name as well.

Working within your limits

Your memory for things that happened to you in the past is governed by the Role of 3. You are able to remember approximately three distinct things about any experience, whether that experience is a baseball game, a movie, or a poorly constructed conference talk. The quality of what you can remember depends on how well you are able to connect those three things to knowledge you have already. You create High-Quality Knowledge when you relate new information to important knowledge you already possess.

The role of 3 in action

The key to the total amount you are ultimately able to recall lies in the interconnections among the knowledge you have. Although you may remember approximately three distinct and independent pieces of information about an event, you can call to mind quite a lot of knowledge if you have many interconnections and associations among the facts.

Putting the role of 3 into practice

Acquiring High-Quality Knowledge means learning to get the most out of presentations, meetings, and other encounters where you are expected to pick up new information. By knowing the Role of 3 and respecting it, you can improve the way you learn.

Smart Thinking is the ability to acquire High-Quality Knowledge and Applying Knowledge when you need it. If you do not exert any control over the information you remember about events, then you are not doing your part to generate High-Quality Knowledge. Instead, you should use the Role of 3 before, during, and after important events such as meetings and classes to be proactive in controlling what you remember about situations. Here are three simple steps to improve the quality of your memory for new events:

• Prepare: Start by doing a little preparation for any class, meeting, or presentation.

Since you will most likely have at least a general idea of the content to be discussed in any given situation, you can prepare by thinking about what you are hoping to get out of it. You are most likely to be able to remember information that you connect to what you know already; thus this mental preparation helps ensure your existing knowledge will be available in your working memory. As a result, when topics relating to what you hope to learn are raised, you will be prepared to connect them to your existing knowledge. This list of topics is called an advance organiser.

• Pay Attention: Thinking is hard work. If you do not keep your working memory clear, then you are undermining your ability to think about what is going on in your class or meeting. One of the demons of modern life is multitasking. Simply do not multitask.

• Review: In the few minutes after a class or meeting—or even after reading a book or article—take a few seconds or minutes to write down the main points.

If you are walking to another meeting and can’t write, then rehearse them in your head. You might even invest in a digital recorder and say them out loud to yourself as you walk. There is evidence that saying things out loud helps you remember them later. Even if you never read what you write or listen to what you record, the act of producing a written or spoken summary helps you remember the information better later.

As you review this information, think about ways to attach what you have learned to other knowledge. These three strategies will guarantee that you develop High-Quality Knowledge. HELP OTHERS USE THE ROLE OF 3

Help others use the role of 3

There are many kinds of interactions that you have with other people in which you want to affect what they remember later. These interactions range all the way from job interviews, in which you are trying to get people to remember things about you, to running a meeting or teaching a class, in which you want people to remember what the meeting or class was about. Unfortunately, not everyone you encounter will know the Role of 3. So, it is up to you to help make everyone around you more effective by promoting a Culture of Smart.

The Role of 3 suggests two general principles to keep in mind when designing presentations, classes, and other interactions with people.

– People will remember roughly three things about their interaction with you.

– Connect new things you want people to remember to their existing knowledge.

Here are three suggestions for improving what people remember about you:

• Start all of your presentation with an advanced organizer.

you want to provide information to others to give them a sense of what is to come. This advance organiser does not need to be detailed. A sentence about each of the main topics is enough to get everyone thinking. Giving people information about what will be coming in your presentation gives them the opportunity to activate the knowledge they already have in preparation for learning.

The advance organiser also focuses your presentation on a small number of items. A common mistake in preparing presentations is to try to provide too much information. If you find that your advance organiser runs much longer than three items, that is a clear sign you are trying to present more information than people can reasonably be expected to take away. Cut yourself back to about three items. You will quickly find that your presentations are much more effective and people remember more about them.

If you can’t limit yourself back to a small number of items, then try to find some relationships among the items on your agenda. If you can find ways that the items interrelate, then perhaps you can turn what seems like a large number of disconnected pieces into a smaller number of connected groups of information.

• During a presentation, stay focused primarily on your three main points.

The more digressions and other interesting facts you add, the more likely it is that people will remember something other than the essential message you are hoping to convey. You may be afraid that by focusing on only your main points you won’t be saying enough. It may feel as if you were repeating yourself if you keep a meeting or class focused on only three items. Remember, though, that when you give people new information, they do not know it as well as you. This repetition provides people with an opportunity to focus on the key information and to elaborate on it while learning.

To help people learn new information, find ways to help them connect this content to their existing knowledge.

One specific suggestion is to encourage people to think of ways in which they would be able to use the information you are presenting. Then, when they encounter those usage situations later, they will be more likely to remember what you told them.

• At the end of every presentation, summarise your three key points.

This summary ensures that you have the chance to emphasize the elements you believe were most important for people to know. In addition, even if other people do not take the time to review what they have learned, this summary gives them one additional chance to rehearse the new information.

Tips for paying attention

When you are in a meeting or class or reading a book or article, you sometimes find you are having trouble paying attention. There are a few sources of this difficulty:

The state of your body affects the state of your mind. If you are tired, then you will have trouble sustaining attention. Coffee and other caffeinated drinks can help that a little, but while caffeine will make you feel more alert, it does not seem to affect the areas of your brain that help you remember new information. So in the long run you are better off trying to add some more sleep into your schedule than you are drinking an extra cup of coffee.

If you are seated for a long period of time, you may also find that your mind wanders. In that case, stand up and stretch. Walk to the back of a meeting room or classroom and stand or pace for a minute. The activity will help you pay attention. In creating a Culture of Smart, encourage other people to stand up and move around during meetings as well. The norm in meetings is for everyone to stay seated, but that may not be ideal for learning.

Get to know your own body’s rhythms. Maybe you get very tired right after eating. So you have to avoid getting for example to a meeting after you eat. If you can’t avoid a time of day that you know is bad for you, then try to take a good walk before having to sit in a class or meeting.

In addition, try to engage your entire body in the class, meeting, or book. Take notes. Even doodling on a sheet of paper has been shown to help people become more engaged in a class or meeting.

The Takeaway

The world is a busy place. There is a lot going on around you. To bring order to this chaos, the mind places limits on the information that is used at every stage. When perceiving an event, only a limited amount of the potential information in the world becomes the focus of attention. The perception of an event is a combination of bottom-up processing using information from the world and top-down processing that uses existing knowledge to constrain how we interpret new events.

During the course of an event, you have a limited capacity in your working memory. Only a small amount of what you know is available to the thought processes you are using to reason and solve new problems. One way that you increase the amount of information you consider as you think is to ensure that bits of knowledge are densely interconnected. Thus, when learning, it is important to find ways to connect new information to existing knowledge.

When you remember an event, you are likely to be able to recall about three independent bits of information about it: That is the Role of 3. It is important to use this knowledge about your memory to organize both what you remember about the events you experience and how you structure presentations to other people. When you enter a meeting, think about what you want to get out of it. Then, pay attention to that information. At the end of any experience, spend some time repeating to yourself the key takeaway messages. That way, you are exerting some control over what you remember about the situation later. When you run a meeting or class, or you attend an interview, introduce the key points you want people to remember later. Then focus your presentation ruthlessly on those points and avoid as many digressions as you can. Finally, summarize the key points at the end so people will walk away from their interactions with you remembering what you hoped they would remember.