Scientists have found a way to help learn skills faster

If anyone is curious, the psychologists discovered this long ago; it's related to spaced repetition, but in education & sports & psychology, this is known as blocking: you get better skill gain by not massing practice on a single skill, but by regularly rotating through multiple tasks. (So in a baseball study, the players would rotate through batting, throwing, catching etc, instead of spending a long time at each activity.)

I think this is called varied practice and that the idea has been around for awhile. The book Make It Stick[1] discusses a study that had 8 year olds toss beanbags at a target. For one group, the distance to the target was varied. For another, the distance to the target was fixed. At a later time, both groups were tested and the group that practiced with a variable distance performed better than the fixed distance group.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0674729013" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;0674729013</a>

Current Biology - Motor Skills Are Strengthened through Reconsolidation<p>12 page pdf: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cell.com&#x2F;cms&#x2F;attachment&#x2F;2045379445&#x2F;2056784269&#x2F;mmc2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cell.com&#x2F;cms&#x2F;attachment&#x2F;2045379445&#x2F;2056784269&#x2F;mmc...</a>

How would this apply to something like learning to play the piano or guitar? The examples given for sports training seem practical, but I&#x27;m having trouble envisioning small variations of a similar type for things like instruments. Maybe varying the size&#x2F;weight of the piano keys, or fret spacing on a guitar?

Random anecdote, take care of your heart. Impaired blood flow will decrease your skills (be it physical, neurological, intellectual) and your ability to grow again.

Don&#x27;t buy your child a bicycle: buy him&#x2F;her _two_ bicycles.

There&#x27;s also Donepezil, a drug similar to the one from the movie Limitless (2011).<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;sciencetech&#x2F;article-2593268&#x2F;The-drug-helps-adults-learn-fast-children.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dailymail.co.uk&#x2F;sciencetech&#x2F;article-2593268&#x2F;The-d...</a><p><pre><code> - Donepezil is used to improve memory function in Alzheimer’s patients - Children learn skills quickly as their brains go through &#x27;critical periods’ - Researchers found donepezil can revert adult brains to these periods - It increases the &#x27;elasticity&#x27; of the brain making it capable of learning rapidly - Researchers rewired a visually impaired patient’s brain to process images - The drug works by boosting chemicals in the brain that reduce with age</code></pre>

I&#x27;d describe at least one of the factors as &quot;play&quot;. &quot;Play&quot; to get to know the system you are trying to learn. This knowledge than helps with the specific task.<p>Given the study I assume a different mechanism coming in to play also:<p>If you try to play a musical piece on an instrument teachers will advise you to practice as slow as needed, not to make a single mistake, that could end up being learned.<p>It&#x27;s like trying to correct yourself on word you mangled up while speaking, you&#x27;ll be so fixated you immediately make the mistake again and again.<p>This memory effect might have been countered by the variations in the study.<p>(I posted the same thing elsewhere, but as a comment of the furthest down top-level comment I doubt it will be seen there)

I am understanding this to mean the small, but sensible variations, gets at the dynamics of a task better than mere repetition does.<p>Instead of learning to correct toward a given nominal, we get a sense of what nominal is, given an input, essentially.

How would this apply to learning a conceptual topic, as opposed to a physical skill?

I&#x27;ve known this for over a decade... My piano teacher instructed me to do that.<p>To learn any piece by heart, never start at the same measure, play voices separately, combine different voices, sing together with it, play it backwards (measure n then measure n-1 + measure n, then measure n-2 + measure n-1 + measure n...), you can do this with bigger sections as well, change tempo, etc. I still remember how to play my 4-voice Bach fugue even though I&#x27;ve stopped playing the piano for years now. I tried this with text and public speaking too and it works.<p>I thought this was widely known...?

This is old news: train your brain guides used to tell people to do this same stuff. Intuition trainers also did it with simulations and such that varied a bit. Those doing it knew it worked due to better performance. Published experiments confirming it is A Good Thing, of course.

This one weird trick that will make you learn things twice as fast.

That&#x27;s why polygot programming is better I guess.