A few wrongs make a right

Do you instantly reach for the search engine now? Did you flip instantly to the dictionary when you didn't understand a word? As with so much other evidence, using your brain is better than the alternative.

This story talks about research into getting better learning from mistakes and that being challenged increases the retention and outcome learning.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong&page=1

As a parent and a programmer I appreciate the energy of making repeated mistakes but then enjoying the excitement and learning that comes out of it when the Aha final mental gel moment comes and this new thing is truly absorbed into the gray matter.

I would think perhaps that the nature of trying to auto categorize, framing and the other narrowing things that happen in your mind when faced with new things must be encouraged to break or shift so that something new can be treated completely as such.

Then you get the chemical excitement from release of new information, and the cycle of happy brain continues.

So it's okay, go, get something wrong, be challenged. Just not too many times on the same thing, okay? :)