The human brain has sometimes been compared with a library. However, the way that we remember things is very different – and it has important implications for learning and development
Many of our clients tell us that they keep getting messages in their inboxes from companies offering “digital bitesize learning” to “combat the forgetting curve,” as they put it.
Learning in small chunks might sound convenient and attractive, but does it actually work?
Recent developments in neuroscience and neuropsychology have prompted many experts to rethink their view of the way in which human beings process memory and learning.
For years learning design has largely been built on the idea that the mind functions like a library. In other words, we store sufficient useful content in our mental library and then draw on this information when we need it.
This is why the design of so much corporate training has been focused on the idea of combatting the effects of “the forgetting curve.” Our capacity to store and withdraw useful information diminishes over time, according to the theory. That’s why we require regular boosters and support activities to maintain it, we’re told.
Why we remember some things – but not others
However, research now suggests that the way in which we retain or forget information doesn’t follow the form of a curve. For instance, we often forget some things immediately after we’ve learnt them, while other facts and insights stick in our minds throughout our entire lives. You’ll, no doubt, have your own examples of both of these phenomena if you just take a moment to think about it.
The problem with using bite-sized learning as a way of combatting the forgetting curve is that it’s based on this flawed concept of how memory works. To be able to apply practical knowledge when it’s required, we need to understand how the memory works in reality. It’s wrong, it transpires, to think that we simply store or retrieve information, as if we’re consulting a book in a library.
No, we humans store the imprints of how things make us feel. These imprints enable our minds to recreate useful information when we need it.
To give one example, our ancestors learnt how to see off a dangerous predator not by storing a mental note of the instructions for doing so. Instead, they used the profound emotional impact involved in being under attack to enable the mind to reconstruct what they needed to do in that particular moment.
The same principle rings true today when it comes to taking on board and then recalling useful information in our daily working lives. We only learn when that learning connects immediately and directly to what truly matters to us. We call this “our landscape of concerns,” and these moments of heightened emotional impact are known as “affective imprints.”
The landscape of concerns
The more that something relates directly to our high order goals and priorities, the greater its affective imprint and our ability to recall the related information. This means that for people to learn, we need to create these emotional or affective imprints.
This involves encoding information by bringing about the most useful neuro-emotional states for learning. Learning is most effective when it’s linked to our major life priorities or, in a work context, where it relates directly to that all-important “landscape of concerns.”
The conceptual model that pulls this together is known as the “affective context model”. As we experience the world, it’s only our emotional states that are recorded in our brains. We don’t simply receive and store information in that imaginary library, instead we react to it. The extent of this reaction determines the strength of the encoding, how relevant it is to our lives, day to day – and therefore how well we retain and recall the information.
Put simply, we only really learn about what we care about.
Understanding business leaders’ practical concerns
Random facts, abstract concepts and ideas that don’t relate to our daily lives are less likely to stay with us. That’s why we see our role as educators being about connecting what we teach directly and powerfully to what people actually care about.
This suggests that the question is not so much “What do our business leaders need to learn?” Instead, we should be asking, “What are our business leaders trying to achieve, and therefore what do they most care about?”
It’s only by identifying the goals and ambitions of business leaders and understanding their practical concerns that we can combat the risk of them forgetting information and, instead, ensure that knowledge and skills stay with them and are easy to recall when needed.
