When do we learn best? When the material is a little familiar – and a little difficult!

Ian Leslie, in his interesting book "Curiosity", writes about psychologist Daniel Berlyne who gave people geometrical shapes to look at.  The shapes differed in complexity.  He discovered that people got bored quickly when they looked at simple shapes.  They were more interested to look at complex shapes.  But when the shapes were extremely complex, they lost interest again.

We tend to be less interested in subjects about which we feel we know everything, as well as in subjects about which we feel we don't know anything.  We tend to be more interested in things we know something about. The partial information we have fuels our curiosity by creating in us an awareness of our ignorance and a desire to know more.  

  

This is why children who seem uncurious sometimes just lack basic knowledge about the subject.  Supplying them with this knowledge may ignite their curiosity.

When we make a little effort, we learn better.  People solved puzzled better when they were distracted by a series of digits read out loud throughout the task, than without this distraction.  When people were requested to spell some of the letters in word pairs they learned, they recalled the pairs better than when required to only memorize the pairs without spelling.  Making learning more active and effortful by spelling improved the ability to remember the information. 

A subjective feeling that the material is a bit difficult makes people process it better, deeper, more attentively and to understand it better.  

Apparently, even changing the font can cause such an effect.  In a study (the details of which are presented below), one group of university students learned a text that was presented in a readable font.  Another student group learned the same text in a less readable font, printed in gray.  The students were then asked questions about the text's content. Students who learned the text printed in the less comfortable to read font did significantly better on the questions than students who studied the readable text!

In another study, with 222 high school students, the researchers selected pairs of classes which were taught by the same teacher in the same level.  The subjects taught were English, Physics, History and Chemistry.  In one class of each pair, the researchers changed the font of the materials which were handed out by the teachers to a less readable font.  In the other class of each pair the materials were untouched.  Students who learned materials printed in less readable font got significantly better grades than students who learned the original materials!

The researchers argue that the change in font made the material itself feel more difficult.  This caused the students to work harder and to learn it better.

Diemand-Yauman, C., et al. Fortune favors the bold and the italicized : Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition (2010). http://198.65.234.49/Aktuell/11/01_14/cognition.pdf