NYT: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2010 6:44 pm
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/healt ... 7mind.html
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas.
But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong.
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time.