In Part One, we considered the first two essential requirements for real learning to occur: Attention and Generation. In this Tip, we’ll look at Emotion and Spacing. In Part Three, Tip #988, we’ll look at the last two requirements: Interest and Meaning.
David Rock, the director of the NeuroLeadership Institute and the author of Your Brain at Work, is the source of the quotes and information that explain the reasons why Emotion and Spacing are important to learning.
- Emotion
“Third, emotions need to be high; we only remember things we feel strongly about.”
Accelerated learning emphasizes the importance of engaging the emotions because our memory is lodged in the part of the brain that processes emotions.
The Triune Brain model, developed by Dr. Paul MacLean in 1952, posits that the memory is emotional and is located in the limbic system. Over 200 million years old, the limbic system is pre-reason and pre-language. So, when we remember situations, we re-experience the feelings and emotions as if they were happening at that moment.
However, we only remember what is meaningful to us.
- Spacing
“Finally, we grow our memories, so spacing out learning is critical.”
Adult learning theory supports the importance of spacing learning with the following principle:
The probability that a learner will learn from practice will increase if practice is taken in relatively small amounts, and practice sessions are separated over time (distributed practice). (Adapted from Learning System Design by Robert H. Davis).
Research on the “spacing effect” has shown that animals (including humans) learn and remember items more effectively when they are studied in several sessions spread out over a long period of time (distributed practice), rather than studied repeatedly in a short period of time (massed practice).
So we can learn only a small amount at a time, and we need to have an ample number of small, distributed practice sessions for us to retain what we have learned.
Question: How do you engage your training participants’ emotions and how do you space their learning?
May your learning be sweet.
Deborah
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