Explain it simply
Expose the exact place understanding breaks.
Variants
- default
Data fields
The fields a spec's page can set for this component (see switchback show feynman --json):
subject
Grounding
Helps: when you feel you understand how something works: trying to explain the mechanism step by step reliably lowers people's rating of their own understanding, which shows where the gap is
Backfires: when the page gets a list of reasons or opinions instead of a mechanism, which did not reduce the illusion, or when the exposed gap is taken for learning: in pre-registered replications, explaining changed people's ratings of their understanding but not their views
- BPeople overestimate how well they understand how things work. Attempting a step-by-step explanation lowers that self-rating, which exposes the gap.Rozenblit & Keil (2002), Alter, Oppenheimer & Zemla (2010), Fernbach et al. (2013), Crawford & Ruscio (2021)
- BExplaining material to an imagined novice in one's own words improves understanding and retention compared with restudying it.Kobayashi (2019), Lachner, Ly & Nückles (2018)
- BAttempting an answer yourself before being given one improves later understanding and retention, compared with receiving the answer first.Sinha & Kapur (2021), Slamecka & Graf (1978), Kapur (2008), Kirschner, Sweller & Clark (2006)