How you can learn in a world of information overload | Tania Lombrozo | TEDxNewEngland — Transcript

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1. 0:00Transcriber: VĂN THÀNH HỒ Reviewer: Nguyen DHCT Trinh Hanh
2. 0:11Software engineers have a delightful practice called rubber ducking.
3. 0:17When they run into a problem with their code.
4. 0:20They'll explain it to a rubber duck.
5. 0:24They'll work step by step, line by line,
6. 0:28and some of the time they'll learn something new.
7. 0:32But how can this work?
8. 0:34The ducks don't talk back,
9. 0:36so the programmers are explaining
10. 0:39to themselves they're not getting any new information.
11. 0:45And yet something about this process helps them learn.
12. 0:51Rubber ducking is an example of what I call learning by thinking
13. 0:57and understanding how learning by thinking works is the key
14. 1:02to becoming a better learner.
15. 1:05Now most of us want to be better learners.
16. 1:08That's because we want to make our minds better, more effective,
17. 1:11and more informed.
18. 1:13But learning can be hard, and in the years ahead,
19. 1:17we'll have access to more and more tools and to more
20. 1:20and more information through the internet and social media and AI
21. 1:26and more information can make learning harder rather than easier.
22. 1:33We run the risk of information overwhelm.
23. 1:37Part of the problem is that we tend
24. 1:39to approach learning by looking outside of ourselves for more information,
25. 1:46but that can just exacerbate the overwhelm.
26. 1:50Instead,
27. 1:52we could be learning by thinking.
28. 1:54We could be starting with the information we already have.
29. 2:00I'm a cognitive scientist and I've been studying learning for over 25 years.
30. 2:05One thing I've come to appreciate is that our minds are richer
31. 2:09and deeper than we often give them credit for.
32. 2:13In fact, our minds contain vast repositories of knowledge.
33. 2:18Knowledge that's contained in our memories and our skills.
34. 2:23Learning by thinking is the process of tapping into that knowledge
35. 2:27to become a better learner.
36. 2:29To give you a sense for learning by thinking in action,
37. 2:32I'd like to ask you a few questions.
38. 2:35As soon as you have an answer, please raise your hand.
39. 2:39You ready?
40. 2:42How many windows are along the front of your house or apartment?
41. 2:55What is the fifth letter of the alphabet?
42. 3:05Is the letter Z on the left or the right side of a typical keyboard?
43. 3:17I'll bet that many of you didn't know the answers
44. 3:21to these questions immediately,
45. 3:24but you had the knowledge you needed to figure them out.
46. 3:28You could use your visual memories
47. 3:30to count the number of windows along the front of your home.
48. 3:33You could use your auditory memories
49. 3:36to figure out that E is the fifth letter of the alphabet,
50. 3:39and you could use your motor skills to figure out that the letter Z
51. 3:43on the left side of a typical keyboard.
52. 3:47These simple examples highlight the richness
53. 3:50and depth of the knowledge you already have,
54. 3:54and they illustrate the process of learning by thinking.
55. 3:59But recognizing that you have untapped knowledge is not enough
56. 4:03to become a better learner.
57. 4:06That's because you also need to know how to extract that knowledge
58. 4:10when you need it.
59. 4:12Suppose you decide to bake chocolate chip cookies,
60. 4:16but the recipe calls for chocolate chips and for salted butter,
61. 4:20neither of which you already have.
62. 4:24Fortunately, you can transform that bar of chocolate you do have
63. 4:28into the chocolate pieces you need for the recipe,
64. 4:31and you can combine unsalted butter with salt to get salted butter.
65. 4:35This is probably familiar when we're cooking,
66. 4:39we often transform and combine the ingredients we have
67. 4:44to get the ingredients we need.
68. 4:47It's just the same for learning when we're learning by thinking.
69. 4:51We transform and combine the information we already have to see how this works.
70. 4:58Consider that information can be represented in all sorts of ways.
71. 5:02Until today, you probably represented the windows along the front of your home,
72. 5:07not in the form of a single number, but as a series of visual memories.
73. 5:13So when you transform and combine those memories to extract a single number,
74. 5:19you learn something new.
75. 5:20You learn how many windows along the front of your home.
76. 5:24And so you can answer a question that you couldn't answer before.
77. 5:29That's the magic of learning by thinking.
78. 5:34There is a catch, though.
79. 5:36Not all learning can be done by thinking alone.
80. 5:39If I've never been to your home.
81. 5:42I can't think my way to how many windows you have.
82. 5:45I need new information.
83. 5:48But asking myself how many windows you have sets me up to learn so that
84. 5:53when I do make it to your home, I know precisely what information to look for.
85. 6:00That's why learning by thinking is so often the best place to start.
86. 6:04Going back to our chocolate chip cookies,
87. 6:07it makes sense to look at the ingredients you have already
88. 6:10before you start making a shopping list.
89. 6:14Unfortunately though, when it comes to learning, we don't have a recipe.
90. 6:20There's no single strategy for learning that guarantees the best outcome
91. 6:25in every case. But there's one strategy that comes close.
92. 6:30It's a version of learning by thinking that involves seeking explanations.
93. 6:37In the late 1980s, scientists wanted
94. 6:41to understand what it is that differentiates the most successful
95. 6:45students from their less successful peers.
96. 6:49Even when students have access to exactly the same information,
97. 6:53the same textbooks, the same passage of text on an exam.
98. 6:58How much they learn can vary enormously.
99. 7:03So what sets those best learners apart can't just be the information
100. 7:07available outside their heads.
101. 7:11It has to be something about what they do with that information.
102. 7:16The scientists found that many of the most successful students had something
103. 7:21in common.
104. 7:23As they studied, they explained to themselves.
105. 7:28They asked themselves questions, and they did their best to offer good replies.
106. 7:35They were their own rubber ducks.
107. 7:39Since then, lots of studies have found that explaining
108. 7:43to yourself can have a dramatic impact on learning across a range of contexts
109. 7:48and a range of domains.
110. 7:50When children or adults explain to themselves,
111. 7:54they tend to learn better
112. 7:57and can apply what they learned more broadly than those who don't explain.
113. 8:03This is known as the Self-explanation effect,
114. 8:06and it is a powerful strategy for learning by thinking.
115. 8:12Let me give you an example from my own research.
116. 8:15It's an example that shows how children can transform the way
117. 8:19they represent information by explaining.
118. 8:24Just for fun. We'll illustrate with ducks.
119. 8:27I'd like you to imagine a card with two ducks on it.
120. 8:32We'll call it the reference card.
121. 8:35Now imagine two new cards.
122. 8:38One has two frogs, the other has one duck and one fox.
123. 8:44You have to choose which of the two new cards goes with the reference card.
124. 8:50Take a moment to consider which you would choose.
125. 8:57Most research, including my own, finds that in a case like this one,
126. 9:03adults will typically choose the card with two frogs to go
127. 9:07with a card with two ducks.
128. 9:09That's because they don't only represent the cards as having a frog and a frog
129. 9:15and a duck and a duck.
130. 9:17They also represent them as having the same objects and the same objects.
131. 9:23When you represent the cards in this way,
132. 9:26it's natural to pair the two sets of matching objects together.
133. 9:32So what about kids?
134. 9:34Five and six year old children will typically choose the card with one duck
135. 9:39and one fox to go with a card with two ducks.
136. 9:44That’s because they represent the reference card as having duck and a duck.
137. 9:50So a card with one duck on it will be more similar to it than a card
138. 9:54with no ducks at all.
139. 9:56Will children do this even
140. 9:58when they're shown plenty of examples to make it clearer that in this task,
141. 10:03the right answer is the adult pattern of matching same with same.
142. 10:09But in one of our studies,
143. 10:11we were able to make five
144. 10:13and six year old children think like adults by prompting them to explain.
145. 10:20After seeing examples equivalent to the card with two frogs being paired
146. 10:25with a card with two ducks.
147. 10:27We prompted half the children to explain why those cards went together.
148. 10:34We didn't give them any feedback, so they didn't have any new information yet.
149. 10:40Those kids, who explained went on to pair new sets of cards,
150. 10:44just like adults matching same
151. 10:47with same by explaining they changed the way they represented
152. 10:53the information to solve the task.
153. 10:58Explaining has another remarkable property.
154. 11:00It's one I've hinted at already.
155. 11:03Explaining sets you up to learn.
156. 11:06My friend Roxanna has a young son who asked her one day how tornadoes start.
157. 11:13She'd taken a class on climate and natural disasters in college,
158. 11:16so she thought she could explain it pretty well.
159. 11:19She started to describe how there's a difference in pressure,
160. 11:22and then she drew a blank.
161. 11:26What sets it off? She didn't know.
162. 11:28How exactly does low pressure produce a funnel?
163. 11:32She couldn't say.
164. 11:34She told me that she realized she knew nothing.
165. 11:40I suspect that all of us have had an experience like this one.
166. 11:46An experience of trying to explain something and realizing,
167. 11:51the course of doing so that we understand much less than we thought we did.
168. 11:57It's a phenomenon called the illusion of explanatory depth.
169. 12:03And this illusion points to another reason why it's
170. 12:07so valuable to start the process of learning from within
171. 12:11with the information we have already.
172. 12:14When we start to transform and combine what we know
173. 12:19or what we think we know to craft an explanation,
174. 12:23we often uncover gaps that point us to the information we're missing.
175. 12:29So we know what questions to ask
176. 12:32and how to connect the answers to what we know already.
177. 12:36By trying to explain, Roxana identified a gap,
178. 12:40something she needed to know how it is that low pressure relates
179. 12:45to a tornado's funnel.
180. 12:47She knew what needed to go on her information shopping list,
181. 12:52knowing what we're missing.
182. 12:55What to look for can be a first step in navigating information overwhelm.
183. 13:03That's crucial because in the years ahead,
184. 13:07that overwhelm will only become worse.
185. 13:11Tools getting and synthesizing information will be all the more pervasive,
186. 13:17and will be tempted to solve problems by turning first
187. 13:21to the information available outside our heads.
188. 13:25We'll be tempted to rely on AI generated responses to our search queries
189. 13:31and on the explanations we can get from chatbots.
190. 13:34These are incredible tools, but they shouldn’t replace learning by thinking.
191. 13:41If we don't start with the information we have already,
192. 13:45we outsource the process of transforming
193. 13:48and combining that information that sets us up to seek the right information
194. 13:54and to make sense of that information.
195. 13:56When we get it,
196. 13:58we become poor at policing the boundaries between what we know inside our heads
197. 14:04and what we merely have access to outside them.
198. 14:08We fall prey to illusions of understanding.
199. 14:15But now you know how to break free from those illusions
200. 14:20by seeking explanations.
201. 14:23When you explain to yourself,
202. 14:26you transform and combine the information you have to answer new questions.
203. 14:33When you explain to yourself,
204. 14:36you're more likely to recognize what it is you don't know.
205. 14:39And so you know what to look for
206. 14:41when it's time to shift from learning by thinking
207. 14:44to learning from new information.
208. 14:48Unfortunately, learning by thinking will not make learning easy,
209. 14:53but it means your effort isn't wasted.
210. 14:56It gives you a path through information, overwhelm to insight.
211. 15:01And learning by thinking won't eliminate the need for new information,
212. 15:05at least in lots of cases.
213. 15:08But it helps you know where to look.
214. 15:10It helps you know what you're missing and what to do with new information
215. 15:15when you get it.
216. 15:17So to be a better learner,
217. 15:20don't start with the information outside
218. 15:23your head.
219. 15:25Look inside first.
220. 15:28Take a moment.
221. 15:32To ask yourself questions.
222. 15:35To explain to yourself.
223. 15:39Be your own rubber duck. Thank you.