Intuitive Declarative (review):
In the last post I described what I consider to be the ideal outcome of declarative learning. Namely, to improve your intuitive understanding to a point where everything fits in harmoniously and makes good sense, without contradictions.
It is not enough to be able to give the right answer at a repetition - you must have a firm grasp of what you are saying. A good rule of thumb is that if your answer field allows for several synonyms or alternate descriptions that all mean essentially the same thing (e.g. big/large/massive/enormous, etc.) then your item is declarative. It's not the words that you say, but the concept that you are recalling. The words you use as representation are only aids to recall; they are not the knowledge itself.
The Blind Path
For a long time I had a dilemma while studying engineering at university: I would study my subjects with a reasonable amount of effort and with the purpose of developing as strong an understanding of my subjects as possible. I generally achieved my aim and often understood material better than my peers. I was able to answer lecturers' questions, help other students and learn new material more quickly. However, to my dismay, students that literally did not understand what they were doing (they told me so, and asked me for help!) were surpassing my marks. Annoyingly, I knew why, but I didn't know how to fix it.
Engineering requires an understanding of how things work. It also requires the ability to use tools (e.g. mathematics, computer programs, and physical tools) to make things work. As you can guess, I was better at the former, while my peers were better at the latter. The problem was that I didn't want to be like them and forgo my understanding in return for ability.
You see, my style of learning would be to start at the basics and relentlessly try to understand the details and how they fit with what I already knew. I tried to devour skills through good understanding (which I now see was futile). Conversely, my peers were more efficient and simply tried to find the shortest route to finishing their assignments by skimming pages for formulas that might work, and crunching numbers without caring about what the numbers meant.
Obviously, I did have some skills and my peers had some understanding or we wouldn't have passed the grade. However, through this experience I realised that it is possible to learn declarative and procedural components in isolation. After all, I had learned the declarative component (with few skills), while most others had learned the procedural component (with little understanding).
The lesson: Like my procedurally-focused classmates, you don't need to understand something in order to be able to do it. You can study procedural knowledge "blindly".
Other Examples
- Knowledge without skill: No matter how well you can explain the subtleties of ([insert your skill here] e.g. music, sport, painting), it doesn't mean you can do it. From here comes the (somewhat cruel) taunt that "those who can't do, teach".
- Skill without knowledge. Many great leaders in history have never learned formal management theory. Likewise, many basketball players haven't studied physics, even though this science describes many important factors of their sport. You can walk, talk, breathe and eat without thinking about it
Hence, although skills and knowledge are both important, it is possible to learn them independently. Furthermore, it is more efficient to learn and formulate them independently due to the minimum information principle.
Use Feedback
Do not try to understand the rationale behind a technique, how it might be improved, when it is applicable, and so on, while you are learning the skill. These things are important, but leave them for another time. You can't learn everything at once.
Instead of focusing your attention on understanding things, focus on the actions you're performing and adjust them according to your feedback. For a musician, this would be the quality of the music being played. For a programmer, this will be the console and the outputs it gives, including the error messages. For a graphic artist, this could be the effectiveness of the image. If you're not sure what feedback you should be paying attention to, don't try and think about it too much. You will improve more quickly by simply setting a goal and training for it.
Instead of seeking understanding, you must learn to move blindly through the methods your are training and listen to your feedback.
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Here you are stressing the fact that most that you should learn procedural skills blindly (with out any need to understand), and use feed back to improve not understanding? If this is so, this goes hand to hand to many eastern teaching practice where first years are devoted to principles, and you never question your master, you learn, you don't argue. As you become a master you, then, gain the right to argue and even question the learned skills.
ReplyDeleteI have might self many times questioning, whether some technique was correct or if I could improved, although some times I have adopted this skill to suit my particular needs, more frequently I found my self at the same place learning the skill they way it was first describe.
So you post make sense to me, only that IMO one should included understanding of why, and how after a procedural skill has been acquired.
E.g. my typing skills are not what I would like, but through many years of usage, I learned that my speed is dependent no longer on practicing individual keystrokes but repeating whole word patterns. I know stress practicing this patterns, in order to improve, but this analysis wouldn't be productive or even possible when I first started learning this skill.
That is an interesting analogy that never came to my mind before. It is also quite evocative. Even in my commerce undergraduate degree we are not allowed to put forth our own ideas - we can only use expert academics' ideas and reference them. Hence, such practices do also exist in the West.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I did not exactly mean this in my post. It IS important that you learn the "what", "how" and "why" (ie declarative description) of each technique. Critical thinking is also very valuable, as it helps you alter techniques to improve them to suit your purpose, even if (as you say) this might not be very often.
You may wish to consider such things before, after or at another time of day... even between attempts. Just not during attempts, since the raw skill itself will not be improved through better understanding. Keep the training of skills and learning of knowledge separate.
It's just like saying that in language learning, vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation etc should all be formulated into separate SuperMemo elements - not because one is more important than the other, or because they are unrelated, but because it allows for better focus and more efficient learning.
I hope this makes some sense:)
Your posts have been very interesting, especially these last two about declarative and procedural learning. SuperMemo provides a good system for sustaining declarative knowledge with minimal effort. The Supermemo software is not ideal for some types of procedural learning; however, comparing declarative and procedural knowledge may help us understand alternate methods for developing and maintaining procedural skills.
ReplyDeleteAre you saying the acquisition of procedural skills should be a kind of "feedback control loop"? I agree that during skill acquisition it is important to focus on our actions with a general goal in mind. When you say "blindly", I'm assuming you mean "blind" to everything but the actions that you are trying to improve. So by "blind", you are implying that we should be "focused on action" but not on understanding during the skill acquisition phase.
@anonymous I think you summed it all up well in your comment.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, SuperMemo is not perfect for procedural learning. However, repetition is important for all memories. Since skills are at least as important as knowledge, we have to learn how to make it work.
Secondly, I do not mean an absolute blindness... Just in the sense of forgoing immediate understanding and instead focusing on getting things to work as required. You might not understand why a method works, and you might not be able to explain it to yourself or to others. However, if you can perform it, you have improved your skill.
Finally, the acquisition of skill can be well described as a feedback process. Successful actions are emotionally reinforced, unsuccessful ones are forgotten or actively avoided... and all this happens independently to the extent of your understanding.
During my graduation years I experienced something similar. I focused heavily on understanding all the theory behind different physical phenomena, and in the end spent very little time doing exercises and, for that matter, previous years' exams. Needless to say, I took some "heavy losses" until I realized that I had to become more practical or, as I described (not without some dismay) at the time, more "exams-oriented". So, over time, I changed my approach: whenever a difficult piece of knowledge was presented to me, I started by drilling the exercises that related to that knowledge -- even if I was not understanding completely what the heck I was doing, somehow I was exercising some mental muscle that I was not aware at the time. I invariably ended up with a far better grasp on what I was trying to understand, and my skill was much stronger. I believe this is very similar to what you explained in such clear terms.
ReplyDeleteYou also put this in the context of language acquisition. I believe you are familiar with the AJATT method; Khatzumoto goes as far as saying that grammar learning is a waste of time. If this is true (and I firmly believe it is), it makes language acquisition an extreme and perfect example of the blind procedural principle you described.
@ Nuno: No, I hadn't heard about AJATT before, but on reading the introduction and skimming through several pages I can only say that I like it, and that it certainly exemplifies blind procedural learning.
ReplyDeleteAs Khatzumoto says, "knowing the path and walking the path are clearly two different things"!