comprehension

From the Lab: The Power of Titles

Posted on by Nick Enge

In The Science of Speaking, I talk about Michael Alley’s “assertion evidence approach” for titling visual aids, noting that having good titles for your visuals can significantly increase what your audience understands and remembers.

Recently, I came across a great example of this. First, let’s see what you make of this paragraph:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell, After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.

If you’re anything like the participants in a 1972 study by John Bransford and Marcia Johnson, this paragraph probably doesn’t make much sense. And if you were asked about it a few minutes from now, you probably wouldn’t remember much about it.

But what if I told you that the title of the paragraph above was “Washing clothes is simple and essential”?

Now, doesn’t everything immediately make sense? What Bransford and Johnson found was that when context was provided upfront, participants were much more likely to understand and remember what they read. (Interestingly, if the context was provided afterward, it didn’t help at all.)

Of course, it has to be a good title: adding a generic title that said “The Procedure” wouldn’t help. Which is exactly what the assertion-evidence approach is all about: rather than titling your slide “Results,” it says, you should put the results right in the title!

Note: Of course, this is only half of the process: after you come up with a good title, you’ll want to find visual evidence to support your assertion, rather than simple presenting a block of text!

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In the News: Understand to Remember (Updated)

Posted on by Nick Enge

In a recent post on Quora, republished by Inc., Denis Matei explains Elon Musk’s strategy for remembering things. In simple terms:

Don’t try to remember, but try to understand; when you understand, you will remember automatically.

This is an important insight for speakers, relevant to both the speaker’s memory and the audience’s.

In our classes at Stanford, we require our students to speak without notes. At the beginning of the quarter, our students often wonder how this is even possible: how can you speak eloquently without a script? Musk and Matei’s insight sheds some light on this. When you truly understand what you want to say, you can easily speak without a script because your brain naturally creates the words on the fly. On the other hand, if you don’t understand exactly what you want to say, it will be extremely difficult to come up with the words.

This insight is also relevant to the other side of speaking, i.e., the audience’s. If you can get the audience to truly understand what you’re trying to say, they’ll have no problem remembering the key points. But if they don’t understand what you’re trying to say, there’s no chance they’ll take away anything of value.

While it’s important to think about how you’re going to remember what to say, and how you’re going to get the audience to remember what you said, it’s even more important to make sure you understand what you’re trying to say, and that you get the audience to understand it as well. Where there is understanding, memory will follow.

In addition to this major insight, there are a few other tie-ins to The Science of Speaking in Matei’s post.

First, the importance of first principles. In the context of speaking, this means giving your audience enough background information to understand what you’re talking about. In Musk’s words:

Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.

Second, the effectiveness of analogies. To further improve your understanding, Musk suggests asking “What does this remind me of?” and “Why does it remind me of it?” The answers to these questions will generate potential analogies that can help you and your audience understand your topic.

Update (2/12/17): Tech in Asia has turned these ideas into a video, which highlights another connection to The Science of Speaking.

One useful technique for deconstructing these big ideas is to look at contrasting cases. Suppose we want to deconstruct the letter “J.” What makes a “J” a J? We could approach this in two ways. One, look at contrasting cases—a combination of different J fonts. Or two, look at the same cases. That is, study the same “J” over and over again. The first approach is better. Because once we identify the common characteristics of all “J”s, we can create our own versions of the letter. Understanding concepts thoroughly then helps us apply our knowledge.

This sounds a lot like the overarching philosophy of The Science of Speaking, which is to help you understand the fundamentals of effective speaking in order to help you create your own unique style of effective speaking.

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