
Researchers have discovered a much faster way to learn new skills - endymi0n
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/12/how-to-learn-new-skills-twice-as-fast/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064305)

------
metasean
The argument can be made that this isn't anything new. Ericsson, "widely
recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental
researchers on expertise"[1], has been researching Expertise and Deliberate
Practice for decades[2].

For example, "The superior quality of the experts' mental representations
allow them to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances and anticipate future
events in advance." [2] Indicates that the experts have already been
practicing with changing circumstances.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Ericsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Ericsson)
[2]
[https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html](https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html)
[3]
[https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html](https://psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html)

~~~
klum
There's also that study where kids trying to throw a ball into a basket from a
specific distance improved quicker if they practiced throwing from two
different distances, different from the one that was tested, than those
practicing only the tested distance.

Edit: I think this is it:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/662537](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/662537)

------
jkern
I'm pretty tired of these articles that grossly extrapolate conclusions from a
very limited study.

------
anu7df
I think the researchers are seeing the effect of mindfulness in action.
Changing the conditions forces the body/mind to not go on auto-pilot and focus
on the minutiae of the task. Consequently they improve through this deliberate
practice. The changing conditions is forcing people to really think and focus
on the task at hand. I would think it is also important to repeat things with
same conditions long enough for the muscle memory/ heuristics to kick in. If
you change conditions rapidly there will surely be no learning involved.

------
kintamanimatt
This article seems to speak more to learning (or improving) new motor skills,
although it's not hard to imagine that the same principles could apply to
learning other skills too.

------
obsidience
Researchers actually found something that was already known for some time. 20
years ago I remember reading an old book about learning techniques. One of the
techniques in it, and one that I use for myself and my kids is to sound out
the answer to questions in various tones. For instance:

8 times 6 equals FORTY EIGHT (yelled). 8 times 6 equals forty eight
(whispered). 8 times 6 equals forty eight (monotone). etc...

It does work, but it frustrates me that these researchers think this is
something new.

------
mtalantikite
Isn't this pretty much what musicians do anyways? When I was learning how to
play piano as a kid the exercise books basically would take one pattern, make
you learn it over the keyboard, and then the next exercise would be a slight
variation on the previous one. Enough that you had to spend time with it, but
not completely different than the last exercise.

All musicians I know do the same: scales, pattern exercises, and songs of
increasing difficulty.

~~~
danharaj
Surely such knowledge and technical skill in learning and teaching was arrived
at by empirical methods. However, it is not subject to peer review and the
controlled experiments one can run in order to verify it are not obvious.
Watching an expert do their craft, one can observe their virtuosity and yet
have not a clue how to explain it in words. There's no manual for teaching
that one can read in order to become a master teacher. There never will be:
skill is a knowledge beneath words. Still, whatever knowledge _can_ be put
into words ought to be. The best social science is the most modest: that which
seeks to clarify and observe what human beings already do.

There is a double edge to this: institutions cargo culting science and
producing monstrosities like the Common Core. Prescriptive social science can
be a disaster. Teaching, being the most important profession, is a weird place
where the people in charge completely disrespect the expertise of the people
doing the work but understand that whoever controls it controls a great deal
of society's functioning. That's why systems like the Residential Schools in
Canada were allowed to do so much harm and why administrators are allowed to
trample all over the interests of both students and teachers.

I wring my hands a lot over the bureaucratization, corporatization, and
centralization of universities and schools. The powers that be most definitely
wield the apparatus of science to harmful, unscientific ends.

------
neves
Waste of time article. A very small group try a very specific test and the
researchers extrapolate it to learn to play music and tennis. The journalist
should be ashamed.

------
asdfologist
No, they have discovered a much faster way of learning to "move a cursor
across a screen by squeezing an object".

