Hypercorrection Effect

One of the things we learnt about ties in with the article I wrote last newsletter – struggling is important for learning. Dylan talked about the hyper-correction effect.  Counter-intuitively, we are far more likely to remember a corrected mistake if we were confident that our initial response was correct.  So, if you were sure you knew the answer and then found out later you were wrong then you are more likely to remember the correct information than if you weren’t sure in the first place.  That is, we remember these errors because they are surprising.  So, it is important that we are invested in our learning, that we are willing to think through our answers to tricky questions and to make a mistake.  Dylan asked the teachers questions that they didn’t know the answer to, made them commit to an answer, then drew out the time between feedback so that we could convince ourselves we were right.  Then he gave us feedback that usually showed we were wrong.  So there is nothing wrong in being powerfully wrong, as we will be more likely to remember the right answer later. However, when studying, it is important to reinforce the new correct answer so that we don’t forget and revert back to our previous misconception.  As Dylan would say, “If you aren’t struggling – the work is too easy – so you’re not learning”.