‘Automaticity’ means knowing something so well that we can do it without conscious thought. Experienced drivers do much of their driving ‘on autopilot’ and, indeed, automaticity helps us do all kinds of everyday things, from online shopping to cooking to using our mobile phone – you could say it makes the world go round.
For learning new things, automaticity matters because it helps us overcome the significant space constraints in our working memory. Going back to the driving analogy, if I’m driving my car in an unfamiliar city while on holiday in France, I will probably be concentrating hard on navigating and staying on the right-hand side of the road; it’s just as well that I’m not also having to think hard about changing gear, checking my mirrors and signalling; I have automatised those driving processes through practice over time.
In his article, ‘Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Practice makes perfect – but only if you practice beyond the point of perfection’ (American Educator, Spring 2004), Daniel Willingham said:
‘Our ability to think would be limited indeed if there were not ways to overcome the space constraint of working memory. One of the most important mechanisms is the development of automaticity. When cognitive processes (e.g. reading, writing grammatically, reading a map, identifying the dependent variables in a science experiment, using simple mathematical procedures such as multiplication and division) become automatic, they demand very little space in working memory, they occur rapidly, and they often occur without conscious effort. For example, for many of us the process of reading is very likely to be automatic. We do not need to laboriously piece together the letters of each word to puzzle out its meaning. Our mind seems to divine the meaning of what we read immediately and without much effort on our part’.
In school, each subject has specific procedures and concepts that are used again and again. In English, there are basic rules of grammar and punctuation without which it would be very hard to function; in Maths, a good grasp of adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying is essential for the tackling of higher-level concepts; the use of ‘evidence’ in history; an understanding of the ‘scientific method’ – subject experts will have a good grasp of what these key processes and concepts are; only when they’ve been ‘over-learned’ will the students be able to bypass what Willingham calls ‘the bottleneck imposed by working memory’ and move on to higher levels of competence.
Automaticity requires practice
The development of automaticity for generalised skills depends on high levels of practice (e.g. Shiffrin and Schneider, 1984) – there is no substitute. Ensuring consistent, sustained practice is the most reliable way to ensure that a student will become an effective reader, writer or scientist. Practice is essential for developing expertise in all fields, and ‘experts’ engage in a great deal of practice. Practice is done for the sake of improvement; it requires concentration, and feedback on performance/progress.
We need to ‘overlearn’
Overlearning means practising beyond the point of mastery, through regular retrieval practice. If we just practise until we ‘get it’ and don’t then retrieve regularly, we won’t ‘get it’ for long. In other words, REPETITION. Repetition is a key part of practice. If I am told the French for milk is ‘du lait’ I will probably need to say ‘du lait’ a fair bit, over time, before it sticks.
What should be overlearned?
- The core skills and knowledge that will be used again and again – the processes involved in basic numeracy and literacy, for example.
- The type of knowledge that students need to know well in the short-term, to enable long-term retention of key concepts – learning a specific case study in geography, for example, because it contributes to long-term understanding of a key concept
- The type of knowledge that we believe is important enough that students should remember it for the future – ideally, forever.
Memory requires ongoing practice – when it comes to school learning, we will probably only remember for the long term that which we have practised in a sustained way over years.
