Glossary

Level: reference · for looking a word up

One line: The terms this library uses, each in a sentence or two, with the page that explains it.

ABC technique — Albert Ellis's: an Antecedent prompts a Belief, which leads to a Consequence; change the belief and the consequence changes. See learned helplessness.

Attribution bias — putting our own failures down to circumstances and other people's to character. See mindset and motivation.

Automaticity — a step practised until it takes no thought, and so no place in working memory. See cognitive load.

Bloom's taxonomy — six levels of working with an idea, in the 2001 revision: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating (in 1956: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation). See studying vs learning.

Brier score — the mean of (confidence − outcome)², with outcome 1 for right and 0 for wrong: 0 is perfect, and saying 50% every time scores 0.25. It is a proper scoring rule, so its expected value is smallest when you report what you really believe. See metacognition.

Buffer — time held in reserve in a plan, because task-time errors all point the same way. See the buffer hour.

Calibration — how well confidence matches results: a calibrated learner's 90% answers are right about 9 times in 10. See metacognition.

Chunk — a unit you already know well enough to hold as one: a word rather than its letters, 1492 rather than four digits. Working memory holds about four. See cognitive load.

Cognitive load — Sweller's word for how much working memory a task takes: intrinsic (the task itself), extraneous (distractions that do not help), germane (the effort of building chunks and schemas). See cognitive load.

Consolidation — the stabilising of a new memory, within hours at the synapse and over weeks across brain regions; sleep does much of it. See how memory works and sleep.

Cutoff — the value of a continuous quantity on one side of which a yes/no word applies. See day or night.

Desirable difficulty — Bjork's term for a condition that makes learning harder now and better later: retrieval, spacing, interleaving. See how memory works.

Einstellung effect — the first idea that comes to mind blocking a better one; in the lesson's model, the hill the first step landed on. See focused and diffuse thinking.

Egocentric bias — remembering our part in a success as larger, and in a failure as smaller, than it was. See mindset and motivation.

Evidence grade — this library's substitute for a program where none can check a claim: well established, good evidence, weak, speculative. See 05_Body_and_Brain.

Focused and diffuse modes — Oakley's names for attending to one problem and letting the mind wander; the lesson models them as small and large steps on a landscape, the first stopping on the nearest hill. See focused and diffuse thinking.

Forgetting curve — Ebbinghaus's finding that memory fades fast at first and then slowly. See spaced retrieval.

Growth mindset — Dweck's term for believing ability can be developed; its interventions move grades a little. See mindset and motivation.

Hypercorrection — errors made with high confidence are the easiest to correct once feedback arrives. Not the same as pretesting. See how memory works.

Imposter syndrome — having succeeded and believing you are about to be found out; the cure is the record of results. See mindset and motivation.

Interference — a new, weak memory trace overwritten by the next thing learned. See how memory works.

Interleaving — mixing kinds of problems in one session instead of practising one kind at a time, so that choosing the method is rehearsed. See interleaving.

Learned helplessness — not trying to escape a bad situation because trying failed before, even when escape is now possible. See learned helplessness.

Long-term potentiation (LTP) — the lasting strengthening of a synapse that fires repeatedly; the cellular mechanism usually given for memory. See brain chemistry.

Metacognition — John Flavell's word (1976) for thinking about your own thinking, including the ability to judge accurately how much you have learned, the one part a program can measure. See metacognition.

Planning fallacy — underestimating how long a task will take, even with experience of past overruns. See the buffer hour.

Pretesting effect — guessing the answer before studying helps, even when the guess is wrong. See how memory works.

Process goal and end goal — "study three hours a day" and "get an A"; the first gets you to the second and is the one people forget. See goals and schedules.

Rule of succession — Laplace's estimate after s successes in n tries: (s + 1)/(n + 2). See learned helplessness.

Schema — organised knowledge you can pull up whole, one chunk with slots. See cognitive load.

Self-efficacy — Bandura's term for how far you believe you can succeed at a given task. See mindset and motivation.

SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely: a mnemonic for the properties a goal needs. See goals and schedules.

Sorites — the paradox of the heap: one grain never makes a heap, so there are no heaps; for dusk, one minute never makes night. See day or night.

Spacing effect — the same number of reviews works better spread out than crammed together, because a review strengthens memory most when some has been forgotten. See spaced retrieval.

Study cycle — McGuire's week: preview, class, review the same day, intense study sessions, self-test. See spaced retrieval.

Testing effect — retrieving something from memory makes it last longer than reading it again for the same time. See spaced retrieval.

Working memory — the few chunks you can hold and work on at once; about four. See cognitive load.

Zone of proximal development — Vygotsky's band between too easy and too hard, where learning is fastest. See how memory works.