Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning.

By E. Bjork, Robert A. Bjork. 2011

1,010 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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Citations in the corpus

Real-world visual statistics and infants' first-learned object names (2017, background): “The experience of high frequency objects in the clutter of many rarer objects may create what has been called a “desirable difficulty” [80], by forcing the learning system to define appropriate category boundaries and by preventing recognition solutions that are over-fit to just a few experienced ta”
Mindfulness Interventions. (2017, unknown): “To borrow an expression from cognitive science, this effort of attending to present moment experience may be a desirable difﬁculty (Bjork & Bjork 2011) such that the effort put forth during mindfulness training exercises can foster insight, learning, and self-regulation skills.”
Understanding Difficulties and Resulting Confusion in Learning: An Integrative Review (2018, background): “This is perhaps best exemplified in the research on what have been labeled “desirable difficulties” (Bjork and Bjork, 2011), specific features of the learning situation that introduce beneficial difficulties that reliably enhance learning.”
How Retrieval Attempts Affect Learning: A Review and Synthesis (2016, background): “In addition to the desirable difficulties framework (eg, Bjork, 1994, 1999) and the new theory of disuse (eg, Bjork & Bjork, 2011), the retrieval effort hypothesis (REH; see Pyc & Rawson, 2009) also states that retrieval effort is a moderator of retrieval practice benefits.”
Interest-based text preference moderates the effect of text difficulty on engagement and learning (2015, background): “…of the current texts, which involved less frequently used terms, more complex syntax, and less cohesion, can be regarded as a form of desirable difficulties that require more effort and deeper levels of processing for appropriate comprehension (Bjork & Bjork, 2011; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996).”
Delayed benefits of learning elementary algebraic transformations through contrasted comparisons (2014, result): “This finding also corresponds with the results of reduced intrinsic cognitive load in sequential learning (Sweller & Chandler, 1994; Sweller, Van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998) and with the demand of desirable difficulties (Bjork & Bjork, 2011; Kester, Paas, & Van Merriënboer, 2010).”
The Self-Regulation-View in Writing-to-Learn: Using Journal Writing to Optimize Cognitive Load in Self-Regulated Learning (2020, background): “These costs can be assumed because journal writing can be regarded as a learning task that creates desirable difficulties (Bjork and Bjork 2011) whose benefit typically becomes transparent for learners not immediately but only at a later time.”
Rethinking the Use of Tests: A Meta-Analysis of Practice Testing (2017, background): “This forces learners to resolve the interference between different processes, resulting in long-term retention and transfer (E. L. Bjork & Bjork, 2011).”
The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued (2018, background): “These ‘effortful habits’ may manifest in a variety of forms, including more sustained attention to one’s tasks, more goal-directed decisions, better learning outcomes, and perhaps even improved mental health [112,113].”
Juxtapeer: Comparative Peer Review Yields Higher Quality Feedback and Promotes Deeper Reflection (2018, background): “Though we recognize these learner frustrations, we believe that eliciting preferences and asking for rationale create desirable difficulties [4].”