Bjork & Bjork's Desirable Difficulties in Action

The concept of desirable difficulties is central to many of the evidence-informed strategies - such as spaced practice, retrieval practice and interleaving - that have become so prevalent in recent years, and so are one of the most crucial building blocks of cognitive science. Based on the finding that instruction and tasks most effective for long-term learning often hamper short-term performance, they are also one of the most counter-intuitive.

In their seminal work, Elizabeth and Robert Bj...