That Neuroscience Guy - Nine Neuroscience Myths About Learning

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Do we really only learn from our mistakes? Are lectures the best method of education? In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss common myths about how we learn and what neuroscience research tells us about the truth. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. So, my PhD was focused on studying the neuroscience of human learning. Now, since then, my lab and my research program has branched out to a bunch of areas, but that was my core interest area was the neuroscience of human learning. And it's something I'd like to think I know quite a bit about. And a problem with that is sometimes you hear people talking about learning and you think to yourself, well, that's not right.

Like what you just said is completely inaccurate. And there are myths about learning. There are things that people believe that are simply not true. So on today's podcast, I'm going to talk about nine different myths about learning and why they're wrong and what's actually right. Myth number one, we learn from our mistakes. So this actually isn't true, or at best you could say it's partially true. The way we actually learn, at least in terms of feedback processing, is when our expectations differ from our outcomes. What do I mean by that? Let's say you're putting a

golf ball. You have an expectation about where that golf ball is going to go, and then there's an actual outcome. And that difference, the difference between our expectation and our outcome, is what I would call a prediction error. It's a situation where we expected something and the outcome was different. I'll give you another example. Imagine you're a university student and you write an essay and you hand it in. You expected that you got 90 on that essay, but the instructor says you only got 60. Again, your expectation of 90 differs from the outcome of 60. And that is a prediction error. In this case, it's what we'd call a negative prediction error because your expectations were higher than the actual outcome. But these prediction errors, that's what actually drives

learning. So we don't learn from our mistakes. We learn when our expectations are different than our outcomes. Myth number two, we cannot observe the learning process. Now, this one's a little bit tricky, but what I'm really talking about is how do we know if someone's actually learned something? You know, we can look at behavior and see if they improve, right? We can look at their performance on a test or something and see if they do better. But does that really mean that they've learned something? And can you really call that observing the learning process? Well, as it turns out, you can. Research that I did during my PhD days actually showed this quite clearly. We had people learn a task. What we found was that some of the people learned the task really easily and they mastered it by the end of the two-hour session, where other people didn't learn it at all. By the end of the two hours, they were as good as they were at the start. And what we observed when we measured brainwave data

was those prediction errors I just mentioned, this differentiation between expectancies and outcomes. With the people that learned the task, we saw that early in learning they had large prediction errors because their expectations and outcomes differed. And by the end of the experiment, we saw that those prediction errors had gone away because they knew that they were right when they made their response. And for the people that didn't learn the task, those prediction errors didn't go away. There were prediction errors at the start because their expectations and outcomes differed. And there were prediction errors at the end because their expectations and their outcomes still differed. But the key part is we were able to tell who learned and who didn't learn the task.

So because of that, we could say that we were actually observing the learning process by peering inside their brains. We know who had learned it and who hadn't. Myth number three, our school system is well-designed. Well, some school systems are, let's be honest. But what I'm actually getting about here is a concept called distribution of practice. they can take a class that runs for three hours once a week, or they can take a class that has two one and a half hour sessions, or they can take a class that has three one hour sessions. Now, some students think that the three hour session is better because they just get it over and done with. But the reality is we know that people learn more when practice or learning is

distributed. So those three one-hour sessions are much better for you than doing one three-hour session in terms of learning. Imagine you were learning to play a guitar. Here's your example. You could sit down tonight and practice for three hours straight, or you could practice for an hour, take a break, practice for an hour, take a break, and then practice for another hour. So you still practice for three hours, take a break, practice for an hour, take a break, and then practice for another hour. So you still practice for three hours, but you've distributed it. And this is what I mean about our school system is being well-designed. We know that distribution of practice really works, but sometimes in our school systems, they have these super long classes

that just don't make sense from a learning perspective. And this is also just us practicing. A lot of people do this. They'll put their head down and they'll practice for three or four hours straight. Or they might study for three or four hours straight. No. Distribute practice. It's a better way to design it. Here's another myth about learning. More feedback during learning is better. And what I mean by feedback is when a coach or a teacher is telling you whether you've done something right or wrong. And the research is pretty clear here. That's not a true statement. There's been a ton of studies that look at this effect, which we call the reduced feedback frequency effect. Imagine you're learning

something and I give you feedback every single trial. So you're learning to hit a tennis ball and every single time you hit it, I tell you that you're right or wrong. A lot of coaches and parents do this. They feel like they have to provide feedback all the time. Well, what the scientific data shows us is that on a reduced feedback schedule, so when you're giving feedback, say half the time, the brain responds better and people learn more efficiently. So more feedback isn't necessarily better. Myth number five, never provide negative feedback. This one kind of annoys me a bit personally because within our school systems, there's been this push to avoid negative feedback. Everything should be positive.

Well, that's not true either. You're actually hardwired this way. We've talked about dopamine and learning in the past, but basically what it boils down to is about half the population has more D1 dopamine receptors than D2. Now this gets a bit technical and I don't want to go into the biochemistry of it, but let's just say that the dopamine can bind at these two different sites and they're two different types, D1 and D2. And about another half of the population has more D1 than D2 receptors learn better from positive feedback, and people with more D2 than D1 receptors learn better from negative feedback. And this is hardwired. This is in your DNA.

So what's interesting about this is if we remove negative feedback from the learning process, about half the population can't process feedback as efficiently as they're built to do. Myth number six, it's wrong to be selfish. Now we actually talked about this on an episode not long ago, but really what I'm getting at here is there's been a ton of research that shows if something is relevant to you, so it matters to you, you're going to learn more than if something doesn't matter to you. It's kind of common sense, but it's interesting because in a classroom situation, a teacher or a coach should be trying to make things relevant to you. And if they're not relevant to you, guess what? You're

going to learn less. So whether you're learning history or math or learning to play the guitar, if it's not relevant to you, you won't learn as much as if it was relevant to you. So it's better to be a bit selfish. Myth number seven. We can do two things at the same time. And I want to approach this from a learning perspective. While you're learning something, can you be doing something else? The classic example is a student studying and watching television at the same time, or studying and texting with their friends while they're studying. Now, we actually talked about this one as well not long ago. This is an example of cognitive load. If you remember cognitive load, and research by my research group looked at this exact thing,

and we were able to show that when there's low cognitive load, or you're only doing one thing at a time, in other words, studying and trying to learn, one thing at a time, in other words, studying and trying to learn, your learning system fires and is more effective than if you're doing two things at the same time. In other words, watching television while trying to study. So in terms of human learning, you can't do two things at the same time. If you're trying to learn something, that's what you have to focus on. Myth number eight. It's better to stay up and study than sleep. Working at a university, this is something I hear about from the students all the time. They stay up to the wee wee hours in the morning, cramming for that exam the next day.

Well, if you've listened to the previous podcasts on human memory and sleep, you'd know that this is a crazy idea. We know that memory consolidation occurs while you sleep. So if you have a choice between staying up later and studying more or going to bed a bit earlier and studying a bit less, study less, go to bed earlier because consolidation will occur and you're more likely to retain more information. And as a professor, I hear this all the time. The student stays up all night studying, but when they write the exam, they can't remember any of it. So it's not better to stay up and study than it's to sleep. It's better to sleep. And myth number nine, alcohol doesn't impact the learning process.

Okay, of course it does. There's tons of research that shows that if you're impaired with alcohol while you're trying to learn, you're not going to learn effectively. I actually threw this one in last because it was research again from my own group and a former student of mine, and she was able to show that alcohol hangover also impacts the learning process. So if you're hung over, you're also going to be impaired at learning. So if you're going to have a few drinks on a Friday night, don't try to learn

something on a Saturday. Alcohol hangover is going to get in the way and it's going to reduce those neural signals associated with learning and that basically drive the learning process. All right, well, I hope you find that interesting. Nine myths about human learning. Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to Etsy and Patreon. Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. There's links to Etsy and Patreon. Don't forget to send us ideas. We want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. On Xer threads, it's at thatneuroscienceguy,

or you can email us, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. And last of all, as usual, thank you so much for listening to the podcast and please subscribe if you haven't already. My name is Olive Kregolson and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another neuroscience bite.