Kieth Terry

My new hero.




He sells instructional videos here and here.

The importance of rests

This from facebook. Jo is going through psychology finals.

Jo Evershed

Do I have a problem?

 ·  · Share · April 25 at 5:50am via mobile · 

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  3 people like this.
  

  • Briony Greenhill perhaps you need some sleep.
    

    April 25 at 10:49am · 
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    Briony Greenhill P.S. I am currently thinking about the need for rest in learning. Right now I'm learning to play a complex sequence of jazz chords. I get to know the chords really well in pairs. Each pair takes about ten minutes. After that I need to do nothing. Just gaze out of the window for a few moments, maybe noodle on facebook. It's like my brain is asking for a rest while it digests the new information. Psychology of learning?
    

    April 25 at 10:49am · 
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    Jo Evershed There is a nice paper by Ericsson (1993) that shows that expert musicians, in contrast to just very good musicians, are more likely to have a nap mid afternoon.
    
    He infers that by doing so they allow a 'sleep cycle' to 'consolidate' the learning so that they are ready for more.
    
    In another interesting study (Seabrook, 2004) compared two methods of learning to read. One in which 5 year olds had 1 x 6 minute session every day for 2 weeks and on in which they had 3x2 minute session every day for 2 weeks. The total amount of learning is the same but the distributed practice group improved FAR more.
    
    Bahrick et al. argue that this is because short session allow you to focus and attend to the subject matter more. I think something slightly different is going on, by leaving the task and returning to it you allow some forgetting which subsequently requires that you re-instate the memory / learning. This 're-instantment' has a powerful learning impact and additionally, helps you form a more generalisable representation of what you have just learnt.
    
    You didn't want an essay but I was looking at this material this morning so it is good revision for me!
    
    xx
    

    April 25 at 10:56am ·