The Challenges of Learning

This week, I found the reading ‘Why is Learning Hard’ to be incredibly interesting. The two videos included were on different concepts, however both play a part in a phenomenon I have often seen online. There are a number of videos on the internet which feature audio that when listened to can sound like two different words being spoken depending on how you listen to it. Often the videos will also feature text to accompany one of the words, which acts sort of like an aid to hear both words. The first time you listen to it, you will hear one of the words, and this is very much like the pretest in Veritasium’s study. Once you have heard it the first time, it becomes very difficult to hear anything other than that word, as your brain has now learned to create an association between the audio and that word. However when you are presented with the accompanying text for the second word, your brain now hears that word from the audio, and it becomes almost impossible to hear the word you heard first now. This reminded me of the video about riding a backwards bike, because just like the way your brain rewires its ability to ride a bike, it also changes the learned association with which word it hears when the audio plays. Often when trying to learn a concept, I will relate concepts like this to experiences I have, such as the video, and this helps me to understand the concept to a greater extent. The first time round that I watched Verisatiums video, I was having trouble understanding why the students were performing better when they were told both the correct answer as well as the misconception in the video, and to understand this I related it to how if you watch one of the aforementioned videos given only the audio, you will only be able to hear one of the words. When given the text as well however, you are able to hear both, as it is a correction technique to overcome your confirmation bias. This technique of relating concepts to things I already understand has helped me learn many things in my lifetime, and I continue to use it in my university education.