Inc. Magazine
Want to learn better? According to psychology experts, simply explaining what you’ve learned to yourself can significantly improve your understanding. This technique, known as the “explanation effect,” boosts comprehension, especially for those who feel less confident in their knowledge. Whether speaking aloud or writing it down, self-explaining enhances learning and retention.
1 Small Change Will Help You Learn Better, According to a Psychology Professor
Author: Minda Zetlin
Want to get better at understanding complex information? For an entrepreneur or business leader, few skills are as vital as learning and comprehension. And with competing demands on your time, the quicker you can absorb new information, the more effective you can be as a leader. There’s a simple activity that can help you understand complex material better, cognitive research shows. Whenever you learn something new, explain it to yourself.
Cognitive experts have long known about the “explanation effect.” It turns out that the mere act of explaining something improves comprehension for the person doing the explaining. It turns out you don’t need another person to tap into this powerful learning tool. Explaining what you’ve learned to yourself works just as well as explaining it to someone else.
Unfortunately, new research shows, people who need the explanation effect the most are the least likely to take advantage of it. “Learners who feel less knowledgeable about what they learned are most reluctant to explain it, despite the strategy being as effective for them,” researchers Stav Atir and Jane L. Risen write in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
In fact, they found, people who lack confidence in their own knowledge hesitate to try and explain what they’ve learned, even if they’re just explaining it to themselves. Instead, they try other study methods that take just as much work but don’t yield the same results.
Tell others about the explanation effect
That’s a shame. It’s something we should all try to change, writes Art Markman, a professor of psychology and a cognitive scientist at the University of Texas. In a post at Psychology Today, he argues for trying the explanation method of learning yourself and also for spreading the word about it to others.
How does self-explaining work, exactly? It could be easier than you think. One approach is to simply run through an explanation of whatever you’ve learned, either out loud, or quietly inside your head. If you decide to run through it out loud, recording your explanation and then watching it or listening to it could be useful.
Or you could do something even simpler: You could write down the explanation in a journal or notepad. One study showed that people who spent 15 minutes a day writing down their reflections of what they’d learned after an eight-hour training did 23 percent better on tests than those who attended the training but did not write down their reflections. That’s a pretty impressive return on a 15-minute time investment.
The upshot? Next time you learn about something, especially if the material is difficult, try explaining it. Explain it to someone else, speak it aloud for yourself, or run through the explanation inside your head. Or grab a pen and a notebook and write down an explanation of what you’ve learned. Then encourage your employees and colleagues to do the same. You’ll all be smarter for it. And in today’s world, we need all the smarts we can get.
Credits: TCA, LLC.