Unlearning

I heard about an interesting experiment the other day.

Two groups of subjects in a memory trial were gathered together and set the same task. One group were all chess grandmasters; competitive, rational, highly disciplined thinkers, specially enrolled for an important experiment. The other group were a random selection of teenage students rounded up from a local school, earning a bit of pocket money as lab. monkeys.

Both groups were briefed together and set an identical set of tasks. They were shown flash images of chess boards with the pieces arranged in classic game formation, as if an actual game had been interrupted mid-match, and asked to memorise the placings. On average it took the grandmasters 2-3 rapid 10 second flashes in order for them all to reproduce the exact game placings on their individual blank grids. The teenage students struggled for much longer and it took anything up to 20 flashed repetitions before some of them produced a perfect replica pattern.

Then the rules of the game changed. The chess pieces were replaced by an unfamiliar collection of shapes and the placing of these new look 'chess' pieces became random rather than classically patterned. The grandmasters continued to work individually on trying to remember which piece was placed where on their grids. The students were told they could work together.

The results in Round Two of this experiment? Almost an exact reversal of Round One with the grandmasters floundering to fit unfamiliar shapes into uncomfortable, meaningless patterns on a grid they thought they knew so well. Meanwhile the students quickly devised a rough and ready system of watching out for different areas of the grid and shouting out pieces and positions to one harried recorder who was then able to present her accurate answers within 2-3 flashes.

I thought there was a lot in this story that speaks to the need for rapid and fluid 'unlearning' in a context of constantly shifting certainties and the rapid melting of traditional boundaries to knowledge boxes and collaboration fields.

I wish I knew who had carried out this little experiment...?