Active Processing vs Active Learning | What's the difference? 

You are confusing several concepts here. Active learning is a TEACHING approach. Sometimes people use this casually to refer to active processing, but that's an imprecise use of language and not how the term is operationalized in the literature (see the citation in the description) Active processing includes both encoding and retrieval processes. What you're talking about is the difference between encoding and retrieval. The benefits of retrieval practice are not limited to simple mental effort. They include things like: knowing what you know so that you can study more effectively and creating better encoding practices (because, if you're testing yourself, you can learn which encoding practices are weaker and which are stronger). That said, there's an important difference between reading (for the first time) and re-reading (as a general study strategy). Controlling for mental effort in re-reading vs. retrieval practice (e.g., free recall, testing, etc.) doesn't really make sense because people consistently rate re-reading as requiring less mental effort than retrieval practice. It's kind of like saying, "would a brick weigh less than an equivalently sized piece of balsa wood, controlling for density?" There are, of course, times when re-reading makes perfect sense. When you are trying to puzzle out the answer to a question. When you don't quite understand something. When you're checking that you got something right or wrong. But re-reading as a general strategy (like "by studying I'm going to open my textbook to chapter 12 and re-read it") is a very poor studying choice. Casual, everyday observations of what students do (or say they do) is not a very good way of measuring effective study techniques. Not only do you not have a complete understanding of what they do - what they do when you don't see them; how much time they really spend on studying; what, precisely they doing when you see them "reading" - but there's also no way of knowing whether they could be using more effective techniques than they are. This is part of the reason why we do research: to get better measurements, to get replicable results, and to understand the mechanisms behind those results.

I prefer Ben, thanks. Can you clarify what you're asking? I know what an exam is and I know what a syllabus is, but I don't know what an exam syllabus is. Are you a teacher or a student?

Got it, just replied.

Fair point. For cramming, my suggestion is to try the techniques that memory athletes use (e.g., subject-action-object; method of loci / memory palaces, etc.). They're great for remembering lots of unrelated material in the short-term. The downside is that it takes some training and practice to use them well. I have a video coming up, perhaps in April, that talks about these kinds of techniques and when we should use them.

Excessive masterbation is bad even if it's not bad for your recall, which i'm sure it is. One way of looking at it is it takes up time you could be spending learning.

It doesn't just decrease your ability to recall, it decreases your ability to engage in effort. Anything in excess, whether 'good' or 'bad' is redundant. Get your priorities straight by journaling or meditating. I used to face the same problem as you, and I worked on myself a lot. Now I am way better. You can also check out the works HealthyGamerGG, by Dr. Alok K., Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Deep Work + So Good They Can't Ignore You - by Dr.Cal Newport to set yourself up for some degree of success. There is a neurobiological aspect to this as well. You are flooding your brain with dopamine and serotonin by engaging in pleasurable activities, but since you have been doing this for a while, your baseline level of dopamine is extremely low. I.e. you don't feel motivated enough to pursue long-term goals. To fix that problem, first, you must understand that fixing this is going to take time. Try writing about your experiences, feelings, and, thoughts. Start out by just sitting still for 15 minutes, quit social media (or minimize it). Final statement: You are what you choose to be. Face yourself honestly and tackle your problems one by one. Cheers, hope you're able to turn it all around.

@@SocraticEngineer thanks for the info , how many days it took to be normal , yeah in my research i found that , brain downfall the dopamine receptors leads to less pleasure and also due to regular pleasure dopamine low and release of aderline in place of dopamine . result in stress , anxiety etc but i want to know that does top students really avoid that ?? if yes it motivate me to abstain from this addiction

The word "excessive" is making a difference here. "Excessive" anything is usually not great by definition. I really don't know anything about the effects of masturbation on learning, although I would guess that, to the extent it relieves stress and encourages good sleep it would be helpful and to the degree that it creates stress and prevents good sleep it would be harmful. Addictive behaviors more generally can impair mood, self-regulation, etc., making learning more challenging. I can't speak to the masturbation habits of my fellow grad students and faculty members, but I highly doubt that "all" of the top people are away from it.

@@benjaminkeep thank for the info .... a positive opinion . i am 2017 graduate in mechanical engineering and i am now doing software job ...i am not a student but love to learn a lot and find different way to make more productive and i introspect about habits which will downfall me and adopt new habits which boost me .thank you .

Thanks! It was probably just the end of a recording session. : )

This is fine, but don't take steps without thinking about them. What you want to do at any given point depends on what you're learning and what you already know. So consider how you are monitoring your own learning - what part is that and how do you figure out what to do next?

The best example of incorporating AI for learning is Super Teacher (new iPad app), which using language processing models to respond organically to student answers during lessons. But this is done with teacher-designed lesson paths and in consultation with subject-matter experts. From the student side, we have all the tools for active learning now (remember, "active learning," as used in research literature, refers to a way of teaching). No new technology required. Reading actively is just as active as the interaction with ChatGPT. But the approach you propose is not a bad one, especially the last step. : )

Thank you!

Yes, thanks for the suggestion. I mention it occasionally, like in this video (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bKblq_vQKPs.html), but I've been meaning to do a deeper video on it. What to do about cognitive load depends on whether you're a teacher or a student. Teaching is the easier and more relevant case: understand students' prior knowledge (through formative assessments of some sort), identify the key skills or knowledge that underlies what you're teaching, use various techniques to focus student attention on the key skills and knowledge (scaffolding, worked examples, guiding attention and observation of expert performance, telling students what the goal of the activity is, etc.), while reducing forces that would otherwise drain working memory (e.g., "layered" reveals of information, reduced complexity of presentation, increased organization, removal of distracting things, etc.). For students, it's more about learning how to manage one's own learning effectively through recognizing "high load" scenarios, breaking down complex topics, etc. There's less research on this. Cognitive load theory, as a scientific idea, is more complex. Certainly we have working memory limitations and those limitations shape how we learn and how people should teach. But there are also various theoretical and methodological issues with the theory itself. This is a great piece discussing them: De Jong, T. (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research, and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional science, 38(2), 105-134. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11251-009-9110-0

@@benjaminkeep Waouw, thanks for the answer.

As far as I know, there is still no conclusive study as of today.

Like Pat, off the top of my head, I don't know of any research saying that your non-dominant hand would become as good or better than the dominant hand. My guess is that it probably wouldn't (your dominant hand just has such a head start), but there are probably edge cases where it could happen. As far as training in one hand helping the other, that phenomenon is usually referred to as "bilateral transfer," so you might have some luck looking that up.

@@benjaminkeep @patenz4559 Thanks for the replies, I suggest reading these papers for more information (if you're interested haha). "Motor cortex and hand motor skills: structural compliance in the human brain" "Handedness Matters for Motor Control But Not for Prediction" If I'm extrapolating the implications from these papers correctly, it seems to imply that the earlier you begin doing the task with your non-dominant hand (assessed by the intrasulcal length of the precentral gyrus) the more likely you are to balance out those differences, but it doesn't seem to equalize ever. If the skill in question is something that requires precision, it seems best to use your dominant hand.

Generally, I would recommend orienting yourself toward sense-making. The human body is a beautiful, complex system: all of the facts you learn occur for reasons and are interconnected to each other, especially in the context of the kind of work a doctor does. Explaining to yourself (and others) how various body systems work and taking practice tests or solving practice problems should take priority over other kinds of activities, IMO. What you're learning in medical school isn't "flat": it's dynamic and useful. If you understand systems at various levels of complexity you are going to remember a lot of the essential information. I would also check out Justin Sung's channel - he's been to med school and has a lot of evidence-based tips.

I've got some videos coming out in the next 3-4 weeks about that - one on reading, one on memory techniques (like the memory palace). Also see my old video on free recall: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FatnXnlwAc4.html

@@benjaminkeep I’m heading into law school and will use your minimal notes / free recall technique. I’m also going to build out mind maps to specially connect and understand the data. I am going to need to learn specific elements though. I’m really looking forward to your videos. I’m going to follow your suggestions.

I certainly think that thinking collaboratively can be a great thing. But it's very rare to have "on demand" friends like that. There's a lot of good learning that happens on your own. If you can find people that share an interest, that's great. But I don't view that as a fundamental impediment to learning. You might catch me talking to myself a lot....

Thanks, happy to have you here! Well, maybe we should amend our "commenting is active learning" claim: "MEANINGFUL commenting is active learning". : )

I have spoken to Justin a couple of times. He's cares about research and reads the literature thoughtfully. Healthy skepticism is always good, too. But Justin is one of the good ones. We might be seeing more research coming out of his organization in the coming years. That said, I don't know that much about the efficacy of mindmapping specifically (and Justin's variation of it). Concept maps, in general, have kind of a medium reputation in the literature, IMO. Sometimes they work okay, sometimes they don't seem that great. I've been meaning to do a deep dive into the mindmapping literature specifically, as you're not the first person who has asked. So maybe in April I'll actually have a somewhat informed opinion. : ) There is a concept that's important called "transfer appropriate processing," which is a little bit related to your question and the topic of this video. The idea is that you can encode knowledge in various ways and the effectiveness of that encoding is not just whether it's deep or shallow, it's also about the match between your encoding method and how you will be asked to apply that knowledge in the future. There are various experiments that support this idea. So if mindmaps are to be effective, then we need to do them with an eye on "how will I be used what I'm learning in the future". Some of the weaknesses of concept maps, I think, comes from user error and lack of knowledge. People don't know how to do the technique very well, but also, let's say you organize your knowledge in one way but that's not the way an expert organizes their knowledge, then you probably have less "transfer appropriate processing". That's why I think it's important to revisit and restructure what we are learning. This helps us revise our organizational schemas (both consciously and unconsciously) to approach more expert, or appropriate, organizational structures. Morris, C. D., Bransford, J. D., & Franks, J. J. (1977). Levels of processing versus transfer appropriate processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(5), 519-533. doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(77)80016-9

@@benjaminkeep Well, then I'm looking forward to April. Infinite thanks for the extensive response.

Might be a while, but I think I'm going to be broaching that topic in the future.

I have been working on something looking at IQ and learning for a while. It'll be a long video, and probably won't be out until summer. But it's coming!

Thanks - no plans to stop now!