Memory is a morass of complex structures, related by the episodes they point to and the temporal and causal connections between them. Learning means the augmentation and creation of such structures. Through experience, memories become useful containers of expectations about the world. But practice isn't the only thing needed to help people learn. Teaching becomes increasingly important as the level of abstraction required becomes more complex. Encouraging a student to see one experience as a variant of another is a key issue in teaching (Gholson et al., 1996; Bransford et al., 1989), as is encouraging the repetition of events that must be learned by practice. We learn through experience, reflection, and explanation, each of which helps us build the abstract memory structures we need.

The Nature of Understanding

Two people can have the same experience, yet encode it differently. They can see the same thing as confirmation of quite different beliefs, because we see in terms of what we have already experienced. The structures we have available in memory are an embodiment of our experiences, and we understand new experiences in terms of our prior structures, which reflect how we have understood things in the past. Thus, it is critical to carefully reflect upon the nature of memory structures.

In Chapter 2, I discussed how a Burger King trip might remind someone of McDonald's. What kind of reminding is this? There are two possibilities.