学会如何学习学习笔记——2. 4 组块——组块库的价值、过度学习、抑制、思维定势与交叉

组块库的价值

The ability to combine chunks in new and original ways underlies a lot of historical innovation. Bill Gates and other industry leaders, set aside extended, week-long reading periods so that they can hold many and varied ideas in mind during one time. This helps generate their own innovative thinking by allowing fresh in mind, not yet forgotten ideas to network amongst themselves. Basically, what people do to enhance their knowledge and gain expertise, is to gradually build the number of chunks in their mind, valuable bits of information they can piece together in new and creative ways. Chess masters for example, can easily access thousands of different chess patterns. Musicians, linguists and scientists, can each access similar chunks of knowledge in their own disciplines. The bigger and more well-practiced your chunked mental library, whatever the subject you're learning, the more easily you'll be able to solve problems and figure out solutions. As we'll discover soon, chunking isn't all you'll need to develop creative flexibility in your learning, but it's an important component.

Chunks can also help you understand new concepts. This is because when you grasp one chunk, you'll find that that chunk can be related in surprising ways to similar chunks, not only in that field but also in very different fields. This idea is called transfer. For example, concepts and problem solving method you learned for physics, can be very similar to chunked concepts in business. I found some aspects of language learning were very helpful for me when I later began to learn computer programming. A chunk is a way of compressing information much more compactly. As you gain more experience in chunking in any particular subject, you'll see that the chunks you're able to create are bigger, in some sense that the ribbons are longer. Not only are those ribbons longer, but the neural patterns are in some sense darker. They're more solid and firmly ingrained. If you have a library of concepts and solutions internalized as chunked patterns, you can think of it as a collection or a library of neural patterns. When you're trying to figure something out, if you have a good library of these chunks, you can more easily skip to the right solution by metaphorically speaking, listening to whispers from your diffuse mode. Your diffuse mode can help you connect two or more chunks together in new ways to solve novel problems.

Another way to think of it is this, as you build each chunk it is filling in a part of your larger knowledge picture, but if you don't practice with your growing chunks, they can remain faint and it's harder to put together the big picture of what you're trying to learn. In building a chunked library, you're training your brain to recognize not only a specific concept, but different types and classes of concepts so that you can automatically know how to solve quickly or handle whatever you encounter. You'll start to see patterns and simplify problem-solving for you and will soon find that different solution techniques are lurking at the edge of your memory. Before midterms or finals, it can be easy to brush up and have these solutions at the mental ready.

There are two ways to figure something out or to solve problems. First, through sequential step-by-step reasoning and second, through a more holistic intuition. Sequential thinking where each small step leads deliberately towards a solution, involves the focused mode. Intuition on the other hand, often seems to require this creative diffuse mode linking of several seemingly different focused mode thoughts. Most difficult problems and concepts are grasped through intuition, because these new ideas make a leap away from what you're familiar with. Keep in mind that the diffuse modes, semi-random way of making connections means that the solutions it provides should be very carefully verified using the focused mode. Intuitive insights aren't always correct. You may think there are so many problems and concepts just in a single section or chapter of whatever you're studying. There's just no way to learn them all. This is where the law of Serendipity comes into play. Lady Luck favors the one who tries. Just focus on whatever section you're studying. You'll find that once you put that first problem or concept in your mental library, whatever it is, then the second concept will go in a little more easily and the third more easily still. Not that all of this is a snap, but it does get easier. I'm Barbara Oakley, thanks for learning about learning.

将信息块以新的、原创的方式组合在一起的能力是许多历史创新的基础。比尔·盖茨和其他行业领袖会留出延长的、为期一周的阅读时间，以便他们能够在一段时间内记住许多不同的想法。这有助于通过让新鲜且尚未遗忘的想法在彼此之间建立联系来产生自己的创新思维。基本上，人们为了增强知识和获得专业知识所做的就是逐渐在他们的脑海中建立信息块的数量，这些有价值的信息片段可以以新的和创造性的方式拼凑在一起。例如，国际象棋大师可以轻松地访问数千种不同的国际象棋模式。音乐家、语言学家和科学家都可以在自己的学科中访问类似的知识块。无论你正在学习什么主题，你的心理图书馆中的信息块越大、越熟练，你就越容易解决问题并找出解决方案。正如我们很快会发现的那样，组块并不是你在学习中发展创造性灵活性所需要的全部，但它是一个重要的组成部分。

信息块还可以帮助你理解新的概念。这是因为当你掌握了一个信息块时，你会发现这个信息块可以以令人惊讶的方式与相似的信息块相关联，不仅在同一个领域，而且在非常不同的领域中也是如此。这个想法被称为迁移。例如，你在物理中学到的概念和问题解决方法可能与商业中的信息块概念非常相似。我发现在学习计算机编程后，我后来开始学习的一些语言学习方面对我非常有帮助。信息块是一种更紧凑地压缩信息的方法。随着你在任何一个特定主题上积累更多的组块经验，你会发现你能够创建的信息块更大，在某种程度上，就像丝带更长一样。不仅仅是那些丝带更长了，而且神经模式在某种程度上更深了。它们更加坚实和根深蒂固。如果你有一个内部化的信息块模式的概念和解决方案库，你可以将其视为一个神经网络模式的集合或库。当你试图弄清楚某件事情时，如果你有一个良好的信息块库，你可以通过比喻来说，倾听你的扩散模式下的低语，更容易地跳到正确的解决方案。你的扩散模式可以帮助你以新的方式将两个或多个信息块连接在一起来解决新颖的问题。

另一种思考方式是，当你构建每个信息块时，它正在填补你更大的知识图的一部分，但如果你不练习你不断增长的信息块，它们可能会保持模糊不清，更难将你想要学习的大局拼凑起来。在构建一个信息块库时，你正在训练你的大脑不仅要识别特定的概念，还要识别不同类型的概念类别，以便你能够自动知道如何快速解决问题或处理你遇到的任何事情。你将开始看到模式并简化问题解决过程，并且很快就会发现不同的解决方案技术潜伏在你的记忆边缘。在期中考试或期末考试之前，很容易复习一下并在心理上准备好这些解决方案。

有两种方式来弄清楚某件事或解决问题。首先，通过顺序的逐步推理；其次，通过更具整体性的直觉。顺序思维中的每一步都有意识地朝着解决方案前进，涉及到专注模式。另一方面，直觉似乎需要这种创造性的扩散模式链接几个看似不同的专注模式思想。最困难的问题和概念是通过直觉掌握的，因为这些新想法让你跳出了你熟悉的领域。请记住，扩散模式的半随机连接方式意味着它提供的解决方案应该使用专注模式进行非常仔细的验证。直觉的见解并不总是正确的。你可能认为你所学的任何一个部分或章节中都有如此多的问题和概念。根本无法全部学习它们。这就是机遇定律发挥作用的地方。幸运眷顾那些尝试的人。只需专注于你正在学习的部分。你会发现一旦你把第一个问题或概念放入你的心理图书馆中，无论是什么，那么第二个概念就会更容易进入第三个概念也更容易进入。并不是说这一切都是轻而易举的，但它确实变得更容易了。感谢你的学习之旅。

过度学习、抑制、思维定势与交叉

When you're learning a new idea, for example a new vocabulary word or a new concept or a new problem solving approach, you sometimes tend to practice it over and over again during the same study session. A little of this is useful and necessary, but continuing to study or practice after you've mastered what you can in the session is called overlearning. Overleaning can have its place. It can produce an automaticity that can be important when you're executing a serve in tennis or a perfect piano concerto. If you choke on tests or public speaking, overlearning can be especially valuable. Did you know that even expert public speakers practice on the order of 70 hours for a typical 20-minute TED Talk?

Automaticity can indeed be helpful in times of nervousness, but be wary of repetitive overlearning during a single session. Research has shown it can be a waste of valuable learning time. The reality is, once you've got the basic idea down during a session, continuing to hammer away at it during the same session doesn't strengthen the kinds of long term memory connections you want to have strengthened. Worse yet, focusing on one technique is a little like learning carpentry by only practicing with a hammer. After awhile you think you can fix anything by just bashing at it. Using a subsequent study session to repeat what you're trying to learn is just fine and often valuable. It can strengthen and deepen your chunked neuron patterns.

But be wary; repeating something you already know perfectly well, is, face it, easy. It can also bring the illusion of competence that you've mastered the full range of material, when you've actually only mastered the easy stuff. Instead, you want to balance your studies by deliberately focusing on what you find more difficult. This focusing on the more difficult material is called deliberate practice. It's often what makes the difference between a good student and a great student.

All this is also related to a concept known as Einstellung. In this phenomenon, your initial simple thought, an idea you already have in mind or a neural pattern you've already developed and strengthened, may prevent a better idea or solution from being found. We saw this in the focus pinball picture, where your initial pinball of thought went to the upper part of the brain, but the solution thought pattern was in the lower part. The crowded bumpers of the focus mode and the previous patterns you built can create a sort of rut that prevents you from springing to a new place where the solution might be found.

Incidentally, the German word einstellung means mindset. Basically you can remember einstellung as installing a roadblock because of the way you were initially looking at something. This kind of wrong approach is especially easy to do in sports and science, not to mention other disciplines, because sometimes your initial intuition about what's happening or what you need to be doing is misleading. You have to unlearn your erroneous older ideas or approaches even while you're learning new ones. One significant mistake students sometimes make in learning is jumping into the water before they learn to swim. In other words, they blindly start working on homework without reading the text book, attending lectures, viewing online lessons, or even speaking with someone knowledgeable. This is a recipe for sinking. It's like randomly allowing a thought to, kind of pop off in the focus mode pinball machine, without paying any real attention to where the solution truly lies. Understanding how to obtain real solutions is important in learning and in life.

Mastering a new subject means learning not only the basic chunks, but also learning how to select and use different chunks. The best way to learn that is by practicing jumping back and forth between problems or situations that require different techniques or strategies. This is called interleaving. Once you have the basic idea of the technique down during your study session, sort of like learning to ride a bike with training wheels, start interleaving your practice with problems of different types or different types of approaches, concepts, procedures. Sometimes this can be a little tough to do. A given section in a book, for example, is often devoted to a specific technique, so when you flip to that section you already know which technique you're going to be using. Still, do what you can to mix up your learning. In science and math in particular it can help to look ahead at the more varied problem sets that are sometimes found at the end of chapters. Or you can deliberately try to make yourself occasionally pick out why some problems call for one technique as opposed to another. You want your brain to become used to the idea that just knowing how to use a particular concept, approach, or problem-solving technique isn't enough. You also need to know when to use it. Interleaving your studies, making it a point to review for a test, for example, by skipping around through problems in the different chapters and materials can sometimes seem to make your learning a little more difficult, but in reality, it helps you learn more deeply. Interleaving is extraordinarily important.

Although practice and repetition is important in helping build solid neural patterns to draw on, it's interleaving that starts building flexibility and creativity. It's where you leave the world of practice and repetition, and begin thinking more independently. When you interleave within one subject or one discipline, you begin to develop your creative power within that discipline. When you interleave between several subjects or disciplines, you can more easily make interesting new connections between chunks in the different fields, which can enhance your creativity even further. Of course it takes time to develop solid chunks of knowledge in different fields, so sometimes there's a trade off. Developing expertise in several fields means you can bring very new ideas from one field to the other, but it can also mean that your expertise in one field or the other isn't quite as deep as that of the person who specializes in only one discipline. On the other hand, if you develop expertise in only one discipline, you may know it very deeply but you may become more deeply entrenched in your familiar way of thinking and not be able to handle new ideas.

Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn discovered that most paradigm shifts in science are brought about either young people or people who were originally trained in a different discipline. They're not so easily trapped by einstellung, blocked thoughts due to their preceding training. And of course there's the old saying that science progresses one funeral at a time as people entrenched in the old ways of looking at things die off. Finally, don't make the mistake of thinking that learning only occurs in the kinds of subjects you acquire from teachers or books. When you teach a child how to deal effectively with a bully, or you fix a leaky faucet, or you quickly pack a small suitcase for a business trip to Hong Kong, all of these illustrate the outcomes of important aspects of learning. Physicist Richard Feynman was inspired in his Nobel Prize-winning work by watching someone throw a dinner plate into the air in a cafeteria. Mike Rowe of the television shows Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Gotta Do It shows how important and exciting learning can be in a variety of different, non-academic disciplines. I'm Barbara Oakley. Thanks for learning about learning.

当你学习新的想法时，例如一个新的词汇或一个新的概念或一个新的解决问题的方法，你有时会在同一次学习中反复练习它。这有点有用和必要，但在你已经掌握了在这次学习中可以掌握的内容后继续学习或练习被称为过度学习。过度学习可能有其存在的意义。它可以产生一种自动化，当你在网球比赛中发球或演奏完美的钢琴协奏曲时，这种自动化可能非常重要。如果你在考试或公共演讲中感到紧张，过度学习可能特别有价值。你知道吗，即使是专家级的公众演讲者也会为一场典型的20分钟TED演讲进行大约70小时的练习？

自动化确实可以在紧张的时候有所帮助，但要警惕在一次学习中的重复过度学习。研究表明，这可能是浪费宝贵的学习时间。现实是，一旦你在一次学习中掌握了基本的概念，在同一次学习中继续对其进行强化并不会加强你想要加强的那种长期记忆连接。更糟糕的是，专注于一种技术有点像只通过练习使用锤子来学习木工。过了一段时间，你会认为只要用力敲打，就可以修复任何东西。在接下来的学习中重复你试图学习的东西是可以的，而且通常是有价值的。它可以加强和深化你的块状神经元模式。

但是要警惕；重复你已经完美掌握的东西，说实话，是容易的。它也可能带来你已经掌握了全部材料的错觉，而实际上你只掌握了简单的部分。相反，你希望通过有意识地专注于你觉得更困难的部分来平衡你的学习。这种对更难的材料的关注被称为刻意练习。这往往是优秀学生和伟大学生之间的区别所在。

所有这些也与一个被称为“Einstellung”的概念有关。在这个现象中，你最初的简单想法、你已经想到的一个想法或者你已经发展并加强的神经模式可能会阻碍找到更好的想法或解决方案。我们在焦点弹球的图片中看到了这一点，你最初的思维弹球去了大脑的上部，但解决方案的思维模式却在下部。焦点模式下拥挤的保险杠和你之前建立的模式可能会创造出一种使你无法跳到新的地方的障碍，而解决方案可能就在那里。

顺便说一句，德语单词“Einstellung”意味着心态。基本上你可以把“Einstellung”记住为由于你最初看待事物的方式而设置的路障。这种错误的方法在体育和科学领域尤其容易发生，更不用说其他学科了，因为有时你对正在发生的事情或你需要做的事情的最初直觉可能是误导性的。即使你在学习新的东西时，你也必须忘记你错误旧的想法或方法。学生在学习过程中有时会犯的一个重大错误是在他们学会游泳之前就跳入水中。换句话说，他们盲目地开始做作业，而不阅读教科书、参加讲座、观看在线课程，甚至不与知识渊博的人交谈。这是一条沉没的路线。就像随机允许一个想法在某种程度上从焦点模式下的弹球机弹出一样，没有真正关注解决方案的真正所在。理解如何获得真正的解决方案对于学习和生活都很重要。

掌握一门新学科意味着不仅要学习基本的知识块，还要学会如何选择和使用不同的知识块。学习的最佳方法是通过在不同需要不同技巧或策略的问题或情境之间进行跳跃练习。这被称为交错学习。一旦你在研究期间掌握了基本的技巧，就像学习骑自行车一样，开始将不同类型的问题或不同类型的学习方式、概念和程序进行交错练习。有时这可能有点困难。例如，一本书中的特定部分通常专注于特定的技术，所以当你翻到那一部分时，你已经知道你将要使用哪种技术了。尽管如此，还是要尽力混合你的学习内容。特别是在科学和数学方面，向前看更多不同的问题集有时会在章节末尾找到，这会有所帮助。或者你可以故意尝试让自己偶尔挑选出为什么一些问题需要一种技术而不是另一种技术。你想要你的大脑习惯于这个想法：仅仅知道如何使用特定的概念、方法或解决问题的技术是不够的。你还需要知道何时使用它。交错你的学习，比如通过在不同的章节和材料中跳过问题来进行复习以备考试，有时会看起来让你的学习变得更困难一些，但实际上，它有助于你更深入地学习。交错学习非常重要。

尽管实践和重复对于建立可靠的神经模式以供参考很重要，但正是交错学习开始建立灵活性和创造力。这是你离开实践和重复的世界，开始独立思考的地方。当你在一个学科或一个学科内进行交错学习时，你开始在该学科内发展你的创造力。当你在几个学科或学科之间进行交错学习时，你可以更容易地在不同领域中的知识块之间建立新的联系，这可以进一步增强你的创造力。当然，在不同的领域建立可靠的知识块需要时间，所以有时候需要进行权衡。在几个领域发展专业知识意味着你可以从一个领域带来非常新的想法到另一个领域，但这也意味着你在其中一个领域的专业知识可能不如专门从事一个学科的人那么深入。另一方面，如果你只在一个学科上发展专业知识，你可能非常了解它，但你可能会更加深陷于你熟悉的思维方式中，无法处理新的想法。

科学哲学家托马斯·库恩发现科学中的大多数范式转变是由年轻人或最初接受过不同训练的人带来的。他们不容易被先前的训练所困扰的固定思维所束缚。当然，有句老话说科学的进步是一次葬礼接着一次葬礼，因为那些固守旧观念的人逐渐消失。最后，不要误以为只有从老师或书本中学到的那些科目才能进行学习。当你教孩子如何有效地应对欺凌者时，或者你修理漏水的水龙头时，或者你快速为去香港出差打包一个小行李箱时，所有这些都说明了学习的重要方面的结果。物理学家理查德·费曼在他的诺贝尔奖获奖工作中受到启发，他在自助餐厅里看到有人把晚餐盘子扔到空中。电视节目《肮脏的工作》和《总得有人去做》的主持人迈克·罗威展示了在不同、非学术性的学科中学习的重要性和兴奋感。感谢你对学习的探索。