hi I'm dr. Steven Chu I'm a professor of
psychology here at Stanford University
in Birmingham Alabama this is the second
in a series of five videos on how to
study effectively in college in the
first video we examined some basic
beliefs that can undermine your learning
in this video I'll explain some basic
principles of how people learn and how
you can use those principles to improve
the effectiveness of your study let's
start by examining how accurate your
understanding is of how people learn
take a look at the following statements
pick the one that represents the most
important factor in successful learning
only one is correct
in order to find out the correct one I
want you to imagine you're in a classic
psychology experiment by Thomas Hyde and
James Jenkins from 1969 see if you can
guess the results the basic design of
their study is shown here with five
different groups of participants each
group of participants was presented with
a list of 24 words the instructions the
participants were given about what to do
with the words varied from group to
group once all the words were presented
everyone had to try to recall them from
memory Hyden Jenkins looked at the
impact of two variables on learning the
first one on the left is whether or not
you knew you're going to have to recall
the words after all of them were
presented if you're in one of the two
groups in the intentional condition you
were forewarned that you would have to
recall the words after they were all
presented if you're in one of the two
groups in the incidental condition you
weren't forewarned about the recall test
it's like taking a surprise pop quiz any
learning that occurred was incidental
the other variable Hyden Jenkins looked
at was how participants rehearsed or
encoded the words what became known
later as level of processing two groups
had to listen to the words and check
whether or not it had the letter e in
the spelling the other two groups had to
rate whether or not they found the word
pleasant now why would this make a
difference if you're checking for ease
then you're focusing on the spelling of
the word which is called shallow level
of processing if you're rating its
pleasantness you're thinking about the
meaning of the words related to your own
experience
that's called deep level processing so
say the word on the list is dance if
you're in the intentional condition you
knew that you'll be asked later to
recall it if you're in the incidental
condition you haven't a clue about the
recall test and the other variable if
you're in the each ekang group you think
about the spelling and markdown yes if
you're in the pleasantness group you
think about dance you check yes if you
like dance and no if you don't the two
variables combined to give you four
different groups there was a fifth group
just told to memorize the words as best
they could
so the list of 24 words was presented
one word at a time and each group
carried out its instructions afterward
all the participants were asked recall
as many of the 24 words as they could
who do you think recalled the most words
let's look at the results and see what
happened and see what it says about
learning the average percent recall is
shown on the y-axis first did the intent
to learn matter if it did then the
intentional learning groups should do
better than the incidental learning
groups but they did not intend to learn
had no effect at all now look at level
of processing if level of processing
matters then deep processing rating
pleasantness should recall more than
shallow processing checking for ease you
see that deep processing groups recalled
a lot more than the shallow processing
groups regardless of whether they were
intending to learn or not now there are
two key points here first people who use
deep processing learn the material
whether they intended to or not on the
other hand if people use shallow
strategies even if they wanted to learn
they did not learn second people who
process words at a deep level even if
they weren't trying to learn remember
them just as well as that control group
who are just doing their best to learn
so the depth of processing matters and
the intention to learn doesn't you can
have every intention to learn but if you
use a shallow strategy you won't learn
let me say a little bit more about
levels of processing because it's a
powerful idea for student learning
levels of processing says that memory is
composed of a continuum of levels from
shallow to deep shallow levels involve
studying meaningless superficial
properties of what you're trying to
learn like mindless rereading or
memorization the deepest levels of
processing involve thinking about
material meaningfully interpreting the
information and relating it to your
prior knowledge or experience or
creating a mental image of the
information deeper processing leads to
better recall you also have to
understand the idea of orienting tasks
an orienting task makes people process
information at a certain level of
processing orienting tasks make people
process information at a certain depth
in this case checking for ease is a
shallow orienting task
making people process words at a shallow
level rating words pleasantness is a
deep orienting task causing people to
think about the meaning of the words
process them deeply and thus learn the
words now let's return to the question
of the single most important factor in
learning we can rule out number one
because we just saw that intention and
desire to learn are not important number
two is also not correct in the study
both groups pay close attention to the
words to do their orienting tasks
attention is not enough to guarantee
learning what about number three you
hear a lot about learning styles some
people are visual learners others are
auditory or kinesthetic learners there's
simply no good research evidence that
supports the validity of learning styles
so forget about them besides if you plan
to be successful you should become good
at learning in multiple ways what about
number four I did make a big deal about
committing enough time to be successful
but time alone is not sufficient for
successful learning that leaves number
five which is correct it relates to
depth of processing if you read a text
without comprehension or if you memorize
definitions without really understanding
them you're using shallow processing and
you will not learn if you think about
meaningful connections you're using deep
processing and you'll learn whether you
intend to or not if you picked
incorrectly don't feel bad most people
get this wrong if you pick correctly
congratulations you're on the right path
to successful study so let's summarize
what we've learned in the first two
videos here are the factors which don't
help or even hurt your learning now I'm
not saying that desire2learn attention
or engagement or bad things but deep
processing is the crucial element a lot
of students want to learn but they use
shallow strategies and they don't learn
now here are the factors which do
contribute to your academic success so
how do we go about processing
information deeply in developing a
connected understanding of material
that's the focus of the next two videos
you