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Level: reference · for finding the books and talks this library leans on

One line: The books behind the pages, each with the page that uses it. The papers are on the references page, sorted by what kind of study each is.

A page cites its sources in its own See also; this page gathers the books in one place. Every entry is here because a page uses it.

The two books the library follows

  • Saundra Yancy McGuire with Stephanie McGuire, Teach Yourself How to Learn: Strategies You Can Use to Ace Any Course at Any Level (Stylus, 2018), foreword by Mark McDaniel. Behind 01_Knowing_What_You_Know and spaced retrieval: metacognition and Flavell's four abilities (chapter 3, Figure 3.2), the Count the Vowels exercise (Figure 3.3), studying versus learning, Bloom's taxonomy and the study cycle (chapter 4), and the 35 strategies in the table. Short, practical, and written for students; start here.
  • Todd D. Zakrajsek, The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony With Your Brain, 3rd ed. (Stylus/Routledge, 2022; the first edition, 2013, was with Terry Doyle). Chapter 1, "Learning from Multiple Perspectives": day or night. Chapter 2, "Discovering Yourself as a Learner": learned helplessness, and self-regulation, self-efficacy and imposter syndrome on mindset and motivation. Chapter 3, "Developing Your Learning Strategy": the buffer hour and goals and schedules. Chapter 4, "Improving the Learning Process": cognitive load, interleaving and how memory works. Chapter 5, "Exploring Social Influences": mindset and the two biases on mindset and motivation, and the planning, monitoring and evaluating added to metacognition. Chapter 6, "Finding and Using Patterns": chunking, on cognitive load.

The science, for a general reader

  • Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard University Press, 2014). Retrieval practice, spacing and interleaving, told for a general reader by two of the researchers. The best single book behind 02_Making_It_Stay.
  • John Dunlosky, "Strengthening the student toolbox: study strategies to boost learning", American Educator (2013), free from the AFT ↗. The short summary of the review of ten study techniques: practice testing and spaced practice most useful, highlighting and rereading least.
  • Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers (TarcherPerigee, 2014), and the free Coursera course Learning How to Learn ↗ with Terrence Sejnowski. Focused and diffuse thinking, chunking, procrastination; written for exactly this reader.
  • Barbara Oakley, Terrence Sejnowski and Alistair McConville, Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens (TarcherPerigee, 2018). The ideas of A Mind for Numbers retold for younger readers, with cartoons: chapter 2, "Easy Does It", is the source of focused and diffuse thinking, which also maps the rest of the book to the lessons here, and of the picture walk in count the vowels.
  • Björn Rasch and Jan Born, "About sleep's role in memory", Physiological Reviews 93 (2013). The standard review behind sleep. Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep (2017) is the popular account, readable and in places surer than the evidence.
  • Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006). The cellular story behind brain chemistry, by the man who won the Nobel Prize for part of it.
  • Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006), read alongside Sisk and colleagues (2018) and Yeager and colleagues (2019) for the size of the effect: mindset and motivation.
  • Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism (1990). The turn from learned helplessness to positive psychology; the source of the three Ps of pessimism.
  • Susan A. Ambrose and others, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2010). Written for teachers, useful to learners; the three levers of motivation (value, environment, belief in success), and the chapter on how students organise knowledge behind count the vowels.
  • Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl (eds.), A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing (Longman, 2001). The revised Bloom's taxonomy, used in studying vs learning.
  • Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), chapter 23, for the planning fallacy behind the buffer hour.
  • Scott H. Young, Ultralearning (Harper Business, 2019). Self-directed learning of hard skills with retrieval and feedback at its centre.
  • John Medina, Brain Rules (Pear Press, 2008). McGuire's other recommendation on the cognitive science of memory.

Papers named on the pages

  • Henry L. Roediger III and Jeffrey D. Karpicke, "Test-enhanced learning", Psychological Science 17 (2006): the rereading experiment in metacognition.
  • Doug Rohrer and Kelli Taylor, "The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning", Instructional Science 35 (2007): interleaving.
  • Nelson Cowan, "The magical number 4 in short-term memory", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2001): cognitive load.
  • Nicholas J. Cepeda and colleagues, "Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks", Psychological Bulletin 132 (2006): spaced retrieval.
  • Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, "The pen is mightier than the keyboard", Psychological Science 25 (2014), and the 2019 replication by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson that found the advantage smaller: McGuire's strategy 9.
  • Hamsa Bastani and colleagues, PNAS (2025), and Gregory Kestin and colleagues, Scientific Reports (2025): learning with AI.
  • Kirk I. Erickson and colleagues, PNAS 108 (2011), and Marc Roig and colleagues, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 37 (2013): exercise.
  • Amy M. Smith and colleagues, "Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress", Science 354 (2016): mindset and motivation.
  • Michaela Dewar and colleagues, "Brief wakeful resting boosts new memories over the long term", Psychological Science 23 (2012): sleep.

The seventy-one papers from the guide this library was asked to absorb are on the references page, each with a note on what kind of study it is.

Tools

  • Anki ↗, the free flashcard program that reads the decks on this library's pages, and SuperMemo's SM-2 ↗, the scheduling algorithm it started from.
  • McGuire's study tools, from her appendix: flashcards, colour highlighting, mnemonics, a timer for intense study sessions, Cornell notes, concept maps, study guides, quiz apps. Her advice is to experiment until something works; read it beside Dunlosky: a tool that makes you answer beats one that makes you look.

Sibling libraries

The math library ↗, where this one began as chapter 12, supplies the mathematics the examples use: the Pythagorean theorem ↗, area and volume formulas ↗, a share above a cutoff ↗ and if A then B ↗.