Essay: The Learning Process

What exactly does it take to learn the guitar? This essay discusses the different stages involved in learning.

What Learning Is

In order to "learn", a person must take information in, make use of it by doing some sort of mental processing and understanding, and store that knowledge somehow. He or she must also have a means to retrieve the information from storage, use it appropriately (which requires more processing), and get the information out or communicate it to others. That's six steps:

1) Input. Some kind of signal comes in from the outside world, or maybe from another person. The information comes in the form of something that is seen, heard, or felt.

2) Pre-Storage Processing. Some kind of decoding and interpretation goes on. The person has thoughts or feelings about the information. The information is perhaps compared to other things or converted into a format where it can be more easily remembered.

3) Storage. The information goes into memory and is assimilated.

4) Retrieval. The information comes out of a person's memory, and he or she starts interpreting or shaping it, making decisions about how to use the information.

5) Post-Retrieval Processing. The person finds a way to convert the information in terms of how it will be communicated or applied. Sometimes this involves translation into another language, or into a different way of communicating. This where a person might synthesize the information with other remembered things so as to draw conclusions.

6) Communication or Application. The person pushes the information into the outside world by moving, drawing, speaking, building something, or using symbols. Sometimes the act of using this information involves passing it to another person.

The above model is pretty crude. It doesn't account for a lot of what the human mind does, such as innovation or association, nor does it show which parts of the process we control, and which parts are purely reactive. Yet it does show the stages involved in what we call learning. Unless a person can take a piece of new information, interpret it, store it, retrieve it, apply it when appropriate, and make that application occur in the outside world (possibly by communicating it with others), "learning" cannot be said to happen. A lot of the time, the process breaks down at some point in the chain.

In a way we're a bit like computers. Steps 1 and 6 are input and output mechanisms. Where we have eyes or voices, computers have keyboards and monitors. Steps 3 and 4 deal with memory. Whereas we use our brains and bodies to remember, a computer has different kinds of hardware for short-term memory (RAM) and long-term memory (hard disk). For steps 2 and 5, we use our brains much like a computer uses its CPU, but there's an important difference. To a CPU, it makes no difference whether an operation is being performed on information that came from outside or from data in its memory. Once the information is in the CPU registers it doesn't matter where it came from. Not so with the human mind.

It's Not Just "Intellect"

The Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory first introduced by Howard Gardner in 1983 points out that there are different kinds of learning and that many individuals are more disposed to do certain types of learning than others. Some people are good at physical movement and body coordination, but not so good at relational thinking such as higher math. Still others think visually while some prefer to read and express themselves better in words. Howard Gardner originally identified seven different types of intelligence: musical, bodily or kinesthetic, logical or mathematical, linguistic, spatial, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. He asserted that other types of intelligence might well exist, and later added naturalist intelligence to this list. The jury is still out on existential intelligence.

For a person to have extreme intelligence in one of Dr. Gardner's eight or nine areas means that, for that particular kind of activity at least, there are few if any problems with the six steps I outlined above. A person with extreme musical intelligence has no trouble absorbing new musical knowledge, fitting it in to other things he or she knows or can do already, noticing patterns, and storing it all in memory. He or she will therefore memorize music easily and pick up the theory quite well. He or she can also retrieve it at will, adjust or control it so that each dynamic is used appropriately, and communicate it accurately to the outside world so that others perceive the music as he or she intends. Yet this ease will not necessarily apply to any other kind of information. Part of Howard Gardner's research has been to understand why. So far, neurological experiments suggest that different kinds of information get processed in different places in the brain.

The scientific community has noticed for decades that, in general, there's a relationship between learning or thinking style and whether a person is left-handed. The "left brain, right brain" theory suggests that the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain, and that the right side of the brain is associated with creative, artistic, and intuitive thinking while the left side is responsible for analytical and symbolic thought. The theory has been tested using left-handed and right-handed people, and although there are many individual exceptions to the rule, in general the research seems to support the idea that different parts of the brain are used for different purposes. Exactly how that works isn't fully understood yet, but there may be a biochemical explanation as to why one person's brain processes music more efficiently than another person's does.

The configuration of an individual's brain due to genetics or other factors is not the sole factor in his or her development or learning. Research done on brain-injured patients has shown that sometimes the brain can adapt so as to compensate for missing parts so as to distribute the load differently. It can actually re-map some of its operations. Sometimes things like language and culture affect which parts of the brain are used for which activities, and how effectively those operations are done. Yet we don't fully understand how that works either. In the brain, cause and effect appear to change places sometimes: when the brain is forced to operate in a new way, it learns new habits.

Dr. Temple Grandin, who writes extensively on her experience of autism, explains cognition, learning, and intelligence a little bit differently. In her book "Thinking In Pictures", she explains how, for her and for other autistic people, the learning, thinking, and communication aspects of thought are heavily visual with little or no verbal component. It was actually not obvious to her that other people used sound or words to communicate. Although she did learn to use words and syntax to interact with others, it is not an intuitive process. Dr. Grandin is familiar with Dr. Gardner's MI theory, but explains cognition more abstractly in terms of an end-to-end process. She describes three general kinds of thinking or information processing:

- Verbal thinking, which is very auditory and verbal, and which is associated with speech, sound, and syntax, and which is often quite symbolic

- Visual thinking, which is associated with sight, spatial relationships, movement, and tactile information, and which is generally concrete as opposed to symbolic, and

- Math/Music thinking, which is a clumsy kind of terminology so I call it "relational" processing or thinking. This kind of thinking is not associated with a sense as much as verbal and visual thinking is, and the results of this kind of thought can often only be exchanged between individuals through the use of symbols that must be processed either verbally or visually.

The trouble with the three different kinds of information processing according to Dr. Grandin is the fact people have to translate back and forth between them. For some kinds of intelligence it's pretty common. People often use words to describe a sunset or marks on a paper to represent concepts. But translating back and forth isn't obvious to everyone, and Dr. Grandin at times describes autism as a very extreme form of visual thinking that is so ingrained that translation back and forth into verbal thinking is nearly impossible. It certainly doesn't go over well in a verbal world. Yet there are ways to improve a person's ability to translate back and forth between different kinds of information. Dr. Grandin does it (and the fact that she used words to describe her very visual experience and thought processes is proof).

Talent And Progress

Just because a person is disposed to learn in a specific way or to do well with a certain kind of material doesn't mean he or she automatically learns. There's a very common belief that a person who is naturally talented will automatically succeed, and that a person who lacks natural talent cannot succeed in the arts, no matter what. But scientific research does not support that belief.

As Malcolm Gladwell showed in his book "Outliers", social circumstances such as the presence of a supportive family and access to a suitable standard of instruction are critical. Gladwell also cites the famous K. Anders Ericsson study, in which Dr. Ericsson examined students at the Berlin School of Music. These students varied from the most "talented" students with the highest potential to those with lower potential who were not expected to perform for a living. There was a clear relationship between the level of perceived talent and practice. In the Ericsson study, the "most talented" players identified as having future solo careers generally had put in a minimum of ten thousand hours of practice. Average players who were expected to make a living as orchestral players had about eight thousand hours, and the "least talented" ones who were not expected to play music for a living averaged only about five thousand hours.

Intelligence in one or more of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence areas, or natural talent as Jamie Andreas describes it, is simply a predisposition to learn a certain kind of thing easily. It is not a substitute for hard work or compent instruction.

My Take On Learning

My current opinion is that there are different ways to accomplish each of the six steps in the above diagram. For example, you can get information into a human being through rote repetition, imitation, explanation, the use of symbols, the use of diagrams, or physical guidance. Exactly which technique to use depends on the thing being taught, and also the disposition of the learner. When you teach a small baby to clap his or her hands, you do it by holding the hands and making a clapping motion. You do not verbally describe the movement. Not if you want results.

Physical things, such as the playing of the guitar, often require physical means to get the information across. Sometimes I grab a student's finger and place his or her hand into the correct position. Rote repetition is an excellent way to build muscle memory, provided it's done in a mindful, controlled way. It's also a good way to teach simple rudiments such as the notes in a scale or a basic rhythm. Some heavily visual students learn well with an imitation strategy, and verbal explanations work well with syntactic learners. But to actually build a physical skill, it takes repetition.

Since human beings have trouble mentally holding on to more than half a dozen things at a time, the tendency is to learn a series of things and then to combine them in an abstract form so they can be thought of as one. For example, when a person is learning to read he or she learns letters first, and then entire words. A person who is fluent in a language does not think in terms of words. He or she will come up with phrases or sentences. Similarly, a guitarist who is fluent in chord changes does not think about the individual movements of each finger. They have become automatic. The mind can and will assimilate discrete things into a whole, but the challenge when learning something that requires precise motor control (such as the guitar) is in seeing to it that everything that needs to be assimilated gets in, without a bunch of extra unnecessary stuff such as sympathetic tension or excessive movement.

I've noticed that people sometimes handle different kinds of information differently. People are definitely biased toward information that comes in through their favored perception medium. This is consistent with the observations of Dr. Grandin and Dr. Gardner. However I've found that the different stages of what happens in a person's head can sometimes be biased toward different kinds of information. For example, a person can be biased toward aural or verbal information, but require a visual cue to get the information out of his or her memory. A person can store verbs very well but have trouble with names or proper nouns. The trick is to identify:

1) Which step of the process is breaking down: is it step 1? Step 4? Step 6?

2) What format is the person working in immediately before the learning breaks down? What format is he or she working in at the next stage? More often than not, there's been a change in the preferred format.

3) Can the problem be solved with a format change? If so the use of a symbolic, mapping, or analogy based strategy may work.

The Application To Music

You didn't think I was going to forget this part, did you?

In my (admittedly unique and twisted) mind, everything breaks down into music in the end. Yet in order to make music, the student must store and retrieve physical information. The communication mechanism, when it comes to the guitar, is a plucked string. That's what makes the note. But in order for the note to be there, and for it to resemble the note that's intended, there are other physical movements necessary in the fingers, hands, and arms.

Working backward from step 6, in which the note goes shimmering out to the audience, you've got the plucking and pressing that goes into making it. The decision as to which finger to use, and how much force to apply, belongs to block 4 and its associated step 5. Muscle memory can help out a lot here. Yet if the note is part of a song, it means it is relevant only in the context of other things that are being played. The song resides in memory somewhere. Muscle memory can definitely help you get from one chord position to the next, or through a complex series of left hand movements such as the ones needed for a classical piece, but how to apply the appropriate expression and the decisions necessary to control the tempo of the piece must also be remembered and applied.

From a player's perspective, a song is a series of movements and patterns. Perhaps they are memorized, or perhaps they are improvised from remembered licks or note patterns. If the player is sight reading, the movements necessary to get from one note to the next must be nearly automatic. All this comes from the memory part of the mind. Yet it is not happening in a vacuum. If the player is reading from sheet music, he or she is interpreting the notes while playing by changing the pressure or volume of a note to add emphasis or feeling. How to add feeling that way is a remembered skill and also a physical skill.

Until a person can reproduce a piece of learned music by playing it, the music cannot be considered "learned".