Ease of processing is mistaken for depth of learning, so learners choose the methods that feel best and teach least.
Rereading and highlighting produce a strong sense of familiarity and poor retrieval; testing and spacing produce the reverse. Because learners judge their learning by how the session felt, the sensation is systematically anticorrelated with the outcome, which is why revision advice is so hard to follow.
In practice
- A student who has read the chapter four times cannot answer a question about it and is genuinely surprised.
- A team that attends a fluent presentation rates it highly and cannot reconstruct it a week later.
- Standing
- Compare the illusion of explanatory depth: both mistake familiarity for understanding.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change