How you can learn in a world of information overload | Tania Lombrozo | TEDxNewEngland

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>> Software engineers have a delightful

practice called rubber ducking.

When they run into a problem with their

code,

they'll explain it

to a rubber duck.

They'll work step-by-step,

line by line,

and some of the time,

they'll learn something new.

But how can this work?

The ducks don't talk back.

So, the programmers are explaining to

themselves.

They're not getting any new information.

And yet,

something about this process helps them

learn.

Rubber ducking is an example of what I

call learning by thinking.

And understanding how learning by

thinking works is the key to becoming a

better learner.

Now, most of us want to be better

learners.

That's because we want to make our minds

better, more effective, and more

informed.

But learning can be hard.

And in the years ahead, we'll have

access to more and more tools and to

more and more information

through the internet and social media

and AI.

And more information can make learning

harder

rather than easier.

We run the risk of information

overwhelm.

Part of the problem is that we tend to

approach learning

by looking outside of ourselves

for more information.

But that can just exacerbate the

overwhelm.

Instead,

we could be learning by thinking.

We could be starting with the

information we already have.

I'm a cognitive scientist and I've been

studying learning for over 25 years.

One thing I've come to appreciate is

that our minds are richer

and deeper than we often give them

credit for.

In fact, our minds contain vast

repositories of knowledge.

Knowledge that's contained in our

memories

and our skills.

Learning by thinking is the process of

tapping into that knowledge to become a

better learner.

To give you a sense for learning by

thinking in action,

I'd like to ask you a few questions.

As soon as you have an answer,

please raise your hand.

You ready?

How many windows

are along the front of your house or

apartment?

What is the fifth letter of the

alphabet?

Is the letter Z

on the left or the right side

of a typical keyboard?

I'll bet

that many of you didn't know the answers

to these questions immediately.

But you had the knowledge you needed to

figure them out.

You could use your visual memory to

count the number of windows along the

front of your home.

You could use your auditory memories to

figure out that E is the fifth letter of

the alphabet.

And you could use your motor skills to

figure out that the letter Z is on the

left side of a typical keyboard.

These simple examples highlight the

richness and depth

of the knowledge you already have.

And they illustrate the process of

learning by thinking.

But recognizing that you have untapped

knowledge is not enough to become a

better learner.

That's because you also need to know how

to extract that knowledge when you need

it.

Suppose you decide to bake chocolate

chip cookies.

But the recipe calls for chocolate chips

and for salted butter, neither of which

you already have.

Fortunately, you can transform that bar

of chocolate you do have into the

chocolate pieces you need for the

recipe.

And you can combine unsalted butter with

salt to get salted butter.

This is probably familiar.

When we're cooking, we often transform

and combine the ingredients we have

to get the ingredients we need.

It's just the same for learning.

When we're learning by thinking, we

transform and combine the information

we already have.

To see how this works, consider that

information can be represented in all

sorts of ways.

Until today, you probably represented

the windows along the front of your home

not in the form of a single number,

but as a series of visual memories.

So, when you transform and combine those

memories to extract the single number,

you learn something new.

You learn how many windows are along the

front of your home.

And so, you can answer a question that

you couldn't answer before.

That's the magic of learning by

thinking.

There is a catch, though.

Not all learning can be done by thinking

alone.

If I've never been to your home, I can't

think my way to how many windows you

have. I need new information.

But asking myself how many windows you

have sets me up to learn.

So that when I do make it to your home,

I know precisely what information to

look for.

That's why learning by thinking is so

often the best place to start.

Going back to our chocolate chip

cookies, it makes sense to look at the

ingredients you have already

before you start making a shopping list.

Unfortunately, though,

when it comes to learning,

we don't have a recipe.

There's no single strategy for learning

that guarantees the best outcome in

every case.

But there's one strategy that comes

close.

It's a version of learning by thinking

that involves seeking explanations.

In the late 1980s,

scientists wanted to understand what it

is that differentiates the most

successful students

from their less successful peers.

Even when students have access to

exactly the same information, the same

textbooks, the same passage of text on

an exam,

how much they learn can vary enormously.

So, what sets those best learners apart

can't just be the information available

outside their heads.

It has to be something about what they

do with that information.

The scientists found that many of the

most successful students had something

in common.

As they studied,

they explained to themselves.

They asked themselves questions. And

they did their best to offer good

replies.

They were their own rubber ducks.

Since then,

lots of studies have found that

explaining to yourself can have a

dramatic impact on learning

across a range of contexts and a range

of domains.

When children or adults explain to

themselves,

they tend to learn better

and can apply what they learn more

broadly than those who don't explain.

This is known as the self-explanation

effect.

And it is a powerful strategy for

learning by thinking.

Let me give you an example from my own

research.

It's an example that shows how children

can transform the way they represent

information

by explaining.

Just for fun, we'll illustrate with

ducks.

I'd like you to imagine a card with two

ducks on it.

We'll call it the reference card.

Now, imagine two new cards.

One has two frogs.

The other has one duck and one fox.

You have to choose which of the two new

cards goes with the reference card.

Take a moment to consider which you

would choose.

Most research, including my own,

finds that in a case like this one,

adults will typically choose the card

with two frogs

to go with the card with two ducks.

That's because they don't only represent

the cards as having a frog and a frog

and a duck and a duck.

They also represent them as having the

same objects and the same objects.

When you represent the cards in this

way,

it's natural to pair the two sets of

matching objects together.

So, what about kids?

Five- and six-year-old children

will typically choose the card with one

duck and one fox

to go with the card with two ducks.

That's because they represent the

reference card as having a duck and a

duck.

So, a card with one duck on it will be

more similar to it than a card with no

ducks at all will.

Children do this even when they're shown

plenty of examples to make it clear that

in this task

the right answer is the adult pattern of

matching same with same.

But in one of our studies

we were able to make five and

six-year-old children

think like adults

by prompting them to explain.

After seeing examples equivalent to the

card with two frogs being paired with a

card with two ducks

we prompted half the children to explain

why those cards went together.

We didn't give them any feedback, so

they didn't have any new information.

Yet those kids who explained

went on to pair new sets of cards just

like adults, matching same with same.

By explaining

they changed the way they represented

the information to solve the task.

Explaining has another remarkable

property.

It's one I've hinted at already.

Explaining sets you up to learn.

My friend Roxana has a young son

who asked her one day how tornadoes

start.

She'd taken a class on climate and

natural disasters in college, so she

thought she could explain it pretty

well.

She started to describe how there's a

difference in pressure, and then

she drew a blank.

What sets it off? She didn't know.

How exactly does low pressure produce a

funnel?

She couldn't say.

She told me that she realized she knew

nothing.

I suspect that all of us have had an

experience like this one.

An experience of trying to explain

something

and realizing in the course of doing so

that we understand much less than we

thought we did.

It's a phenomenon called the illusion of

explanatory depth.

And this illusion

points to another reason why it's so

valuable to start the process of

learning from within.

With the information we have already.

When we start to transform and combine

what we know

or what we think we know

to craft an explanation

we often uncover gaps that point us to

the information we're missing.

So we know what questions to ask and how

to connect the answers to what we know

already.

By trying to explain

Roxana identified a gap, something she

needed to know.

How it is that low pressure relates to a

tornado's funnel.

She knew what needed to go on her

information shopping list.

Knowing what we're missing

what to look for

can be a first step in navigating

information overwhelm.

That's crucial because in the years

ahead that overwhelm will only become

worse.

Tools for getting and synthesizing

information

will be all the more pervasive.

And we'll be tempted to solve problems

by turning first to the information

available outside our heads.

We'll be tempted to rely on AI-generated

responses to our search queries

and on the explanations we can get from

chatbots.

These are incredible tools.

But they shouldn't replace learning by

thinking.

If we don't start with the information

we have already

we outsource the process of transforming

and combining that information that sets

us up to seek the right information

and to make sense of that information

when we get it.

We become poor at policing the

boundaries between what we know inside

our heads

and what we merely have access to

outside them.

We fall prey

to illusions

of understanding.

But now you know how to break free from

those illusions.

By seeking explanations.

When you explain to yourself

you transform and combine the

information you have

to answer new questions.

When you explain to yourself

you're more likely to recognize what it

is you don't know.

And so you know what to look for when

it's time to shift from learning by

thinking

to learning from new information.

Unfortunately

learning by thinking will not make

learning easy.

But it means your effort isn't wasted.

It gives you a path through information

overwhelm to insight.

And learning by thinking won't eliminate

the need for new information, at least

in lots of cases.

But it helps you know where to look.

It helps you know what you're missing

and what to do with new information when

you get it.

So to be a better learner

don't start with the information

outside your head.

Look inside first.

Take

a moment

to ask yourself questions

to explain to yourself.

Be your own rubber duck.

Thank you.

>> [applause]