{"id":1652,"date":"2017-02-17T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2017-12-28T21:29:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T21:29:31","slug":"a-fresh-desirable-difficulty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/a-fresh-desirable-difficulty\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fresh Desirable Difficulty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork have argued<\/a> that the right kind of difficulty can facilitate ultimate learning. These difficulties–“desirable difficulties”–require extra cognitive engagement, and thereby promote long-term memory formation.<\/p>\n

Presenters at Learning and the Brain conferences often talk about “spacing,” or “interleaving,” or the “testing effect.” (In fact, Ian Kelleher has recently blogged<\/a> about these strategies.) All these techniques boost learning by increasing desirable difficulty.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Gasperlin wanted to know: is it desirable to divide students’ attention<\/em>? Would that kind of difficulty enhance learning?<\/p>\n

The short answer: No<\/a>. Forcing students to focus on two things does ramp up the level of difficulty; however, it does not increase learning.<\/p>\n

(However, it decreases<\/em> learning much less than I would have predicted.)<\/p>\n

The big news here, in my opinion, is that researchers are starting to ask this question. Up until now, we have heard a great deal about desirable difficulties, but haven’t gotten much guidance on UNdesirable ones. Now–finally<\/em>–we’re starting to get research-based answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork have argued that the right kind of difficulty can facilitate ultimate learning. These difficulties–“desirable difficulties”–require extra cognitive engagement, and thereby promote long-term memory formation. Presenters at Learning and the Brain conferences often talk about “spacing,” or “interleaving,” or the “testing effect.” (In fact, Ian Kelleher has recently blogged about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31,66],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-attention","tag-desirable-difficulty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1656,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/1656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}