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Learn it RIGHT the First Time

How important is it for students to learn things correctly the first time? Here's an answer that comes to us from a study reported in October 1910:

Very early in the experimental work, it was noticed that if a learner got a point wrong in the first or any early repetition, the error consistently reappeared after future repetitions. In the early presentations, certain words, phrases or sentences would be given particular interpretations, and when the words came again in later readings, the first interpretation came again also. It seemed that the first meaning conveyed by the words would come as a matter of course in future readings and prevent any other interpretation. Since it was impossible to get more than about half of the facts at one reading, many erroneous meanings were usually conveyed by the word symbols in the first reading; these errors were on a low level of attention in later readings, the focus of attention being occupied with facts not gotten at all in the first reading. It was only after 'these other points had been gotten and
fixed that the symbols erroneously interpreted would come to the focus of attention and the right interpretation appear. Usually, however, the learner would finally get the right meaning, although sometimes the right meaning would not appear till attention was called by the experimenter to the particular point. Sometimes a phrase used by the learner would be just slightly different in meaning from the one used
in the matter presented to him, and in these cases, the learner would persist to the end in giving his own slightly incorrect expression. It therefore appears that the length of time required for a learner to get all the points in a given material is in part dependent on the number of points got wrong in the beginning that must be unlearned later.

Pyle, W. (1910, October). One function of the teacher in memory work. Journal of Educational Psychology, 1(8), 474-476. Retrieved June 23, 2009, doi:10.1037/h0074059
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