Learning through mistakes benefits brain
August 24th 2011 08:40
It sounds like a cliché, but a study has concluded it’s better for people to learn from their mistakes.
Canadian researchers have discovered that older people’s brains benefit more from making mistakes using trial and error learning rather than if the correct answer is automatically fed to them.
Past studies have shown that making mistakes while learning information hurt memory performance in older adults, over passive, errorless learning, when the correct answer is handily provided.
“Older adults can also benefit from making mistakes and it can help them learn the correct information later on,” said lead investigator Andree-Ann Cyr, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Toronto working at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.
Scientific literature has traditionally embraced errorless learning for older adults.
“Our study has shown if older adults are learning material that is very conceptual, where they can make a meaningful relationship between their errors and the correct information that they are supposed to remember, in those cases the errors can actually be quite beneficial for the learning process,” Cyr said.
For the study, researchers compared the memory benefits of trial-and-error learning (TEL) with errorless learning (EL) in memory exercises with groups of healthy young adults in their 20s and older healthy adults with an average age of 70.
The findings have important implications for how information is taught to older adults in the classroom, and for rehabilitation procedures aimed at delaying cognitive decline.
“We recommend older adults should be encouraged to make errors when learning and passively giving them the correct information. Learning from your mistakes can improve your memory,” Cyr said.
Trial-and-error learning takes more effort in what’s called a cognitive encoding process where the brain has to scaffold its way to making richer associations and linkages in order to reach the correct target information.
The study is to be published Wednesday in the journal Psychology and Aging.
| 31 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
subscribe to this blog
