47 checked facts

Learning

Everything on this site about learning — each one naming the study behind it.

The presence of others disrupts your ability to learn.
While an audience can improve performance on familiar, well-learned tasks, their presence often impairs performance on…
You cannot stop yourself from imagining an impossible scenario.
Counterfactual thinking is your brain's persistent attempt to simulate 'what if' scenarios to understand outcomes.…
New memories actively overwrite what you already remembered.
Retroactive interference describes the inhibition or competitive interference that makes it difficult to retrieve olde…
Your brain blocks out memories to clear the way.
Proactive interference occurs when your older memories disrupt your ability to recall newer information.…
You project your current knowledge onto your past self.
The 'hindsight bias' causes you to misremember your original state of ignorance.…
You learn better by doing, not by listening.
The 'production effect' suggests that verbalizing info improves memory more than reading it.…
You learn faster when you expect to teach the material.
A 2014 study found that participants who prepared to teach information performed significantly better on recall tests …
You are more likely to reach goals you write down by hand.
A 2014 study suggested that handwriting may promote deeper processing of information than typing, though subsequent at…
Your hands are not just reflecting your thoughts; they are thinking.
A 2009 study showed that students who were encouraged to gesture while explaining math problems retained the informati…
You remember words significantly better if you read them aloud.
The production effect shows that articulating information improves memory compared to reading it silently.…
Testing yourself is a better strategy than studying more.
The study was published in 'Psychological Science', not 'Perspectives on Psychological Science'.…
You believe that reading is the same as learning.
Semantic processing results in better recall than structural or phonemic processing, a finding supported by subsequent…
You follow successful people even when their methods are flawed.
Prestige bias is the tendency to copy the behaviors of high-status individuals regardless of whether the behavior cont…
You remember stories better than sequences of abstract facts.
The dual-coding theory suggests that memory is enhanced by pairing verbal and visual information.…
You fix mistakes faster when you feel certain.
Participants were more likely to correct an error if they were 'highly confident' that the wrong answer was actually c…
You cannot un-know what you have already learned.
Once you acquire knowledge, you systematically overestimate how easily others can grasp the same concept.…
You learn significantly more by forgetting a little bit.
Distributed learning sessions result in longer retention than cramming the same amount of time into one sitting.…
You remember information better if it relates to you.
A 1977 study showed that people recall words more effectively when asked to relate them to their own personal experien…
Your brain learns more by spreading study over time.
A 1978 study by Landauer and Bjork confirmed that information is retained better when study sessions are spaced out.…
You remember stories better than raw information.
A 1969 study by Bower and Clark showed that readers remembered information significantly better when it was framed as …
You have stopped remembering things because the internet does.
The Google effect, or digital amnesia, is the tendency to forget information that can be easily accessed via search en…
You assume experts share your clarity of thought.
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias where you find it difficult to imagine what it is like not to know what you…
You remember information better if you create it.
Memory retention is significantly higher for information you generate yourself than for information you are simply giv…
You find it nearly impossible to ignore what you know.
The curse of knowledge describes a cognitive bias where individuals are unable to ignore their own knowledge when pred…
You remember unusual details better than common ones.
The bizarreness effect suggests that bizarre items are sometimes recalled better than common ones, though researchers …
You only remember the beginning and the end.
The serial position effect demonstrates that recall is typically highest for the first and last items in a sequence.…
You remember information best when it relates to you.
The self-reference effect demonstrates that humans have superior recall for information processed in relation to their…
You assume you understand everyday objects better than you do.
The illusion of explanatory depth reveals that people believe they understand complex systems until asked to explain t…
Your brain is programmed to ignore the middle.
The serial position effect was first identified and described by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885.…
You lose the ability to teach once you learn.
The curse of knowledge describes the inability to imagine that other people do not know what you know.…
You retain information better when you create it yourself.
Information generated through your own effort is remembered better than information read or heard passively.…
You are most confident when you know the least.
The 1999 study found that individuals performing in the lowest quartiles of certain tasks significantly overestimate t…
Rewards can turn your favorite hobby into a chore.
Extrinsic incentives often reduce the intrinsic motivation you initially felt for an activity.…
You remember information best when you connect it to yourself.
The self-reference effect is the tendency for people to encode information differently when it is related to themselve…
You cannot imagine a world where you do not know this.
Once you possess information, you find it nearly impossible to simulate the mindset of someone who lacks it.…
You learn more by studying in intervals than in blocks.
The spacing effect, first studied systematically by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885, demonstrates that information is retai…
You remember facts better if you explain them yourself.
The generation effect demonstrates that information is better retained when you produce it from your own mind.…
You remember things better when they relate to you.
A 1977 study found people recall adjectives significantly better when they judge them against their own traits.…
You rewrite your history to appear prescient.
A 1975 study revealed that after an event occurred, participants significantly overestimated how likely they were to h…
You only remember the beginning and the end.
Ebbinghaus (1885) identified the serial position effect, but the explanation attributing it to the interaction between…
You remember information better if you create it yourself.
A 1978 study demonstrated that participants remembered words better when they generated them rather than simply readin…
You find it impossible to ignore what you know.
In Elizabeth Newton's 1990 study, tappers were unable to predict how difficult it would be for listeners to identify a…
Your recall improves when you return to your original mood.
A 1981 study showed that participants remembered information better if they were in the same emotional state during re…
You notice things more frequently after learning about them.
The frequency illusion occurs when a new piece of information you recently learned suddenly seems to appear everywhere…
You rewrite your own history to match current outcomes.
People consistently misremember their past predictions as being more accurate than they actually were.…
If it sounds familiar, you assume it is true.
A 2015 study found that statements were rated as more accurate if they had been heard previously, even when the source…
You find it impossible to remember what it is like to be ignorant.
A 1989 study found that better-informed agents cannot accurately anticipate the judgments and market valuations of les…