Research
Photo: Marco Montalti
Designing for Higher Order Learning
Learning is key to human flourishing. For people to thrive in our complex world, higher order learning skills are vital. My research bridges cognitive and educational psychology to design, test, and translate counterintuitive strategies that empower people to learn deeply.
Learning from Deliberate Errors
In the traditional Japanese art of kintsugi, broken ceramics are given a new lease of life by mending them with lacquer dusted with gold—instead of being concealed, the cracks on the damaged artifacts are illuminated with seams of gold and valued as part of the objects’ unique history.
Indeed, errors are inevitable in life. Whereas they have traditionally been viewed as aversive events, my research has developed a Prevention–Permission–Promotion (3P) framework that considers how errors can be best positioned to enhance learning (Wong & Lim, 2019, Educational Psychologist). Based on this framework, I pioneered the counterintuitive approach of deliberate erring, where people are guided to intentionally commit and correct errors in low-stakes contexts.
Across multiple studies, I have found that deliberate erring improves learning more than avoiding errors or even observing others' errors—a phenomenon I have termed the derring effect. My work has established the diverse benefits of deliberate erring for not only basic memory recall (Wong & Lim, 2022, JEP: General), but also higher order knowledge application (Wong & Lim, 2022, Journal of Educational Psychology), problem-solving (Yap & Wong, 2024, Journal of Educational Psychology), and far transfer across different knowledge domains (Wong, 2023, Educational Psychology Review). Overall, these findings offer new insights for promoting errors as part of the intentional design for greater learning success.
Learning by Teaching Others
Whereas people can learn individually from their errors, learning is further catalyzed by harnessing the social nature of constructing knowledge. When people teach others, they learn better themselves. My research has shown that learning-by-teaching is a counterintuitive way to harness learning benefits via teaching, which improves higher order outcomes such as creative research question generation (Wong, Lim, & Lim, 2023, Journal of Educational Psychology).
To explain why teaching is effective, our lab has advanced a novel power hypothesis: When people step into the role of a teacher and teach, they experience a heightened sense of power that boosts their own learning (Wong & Lim, 2026, Educational Psychology Review).
Whereas learning-by-teaching typically involves teaching peers or agents in computer- or video-based environments, I have examined how this technique can be implemented more accessibly and efficiently to enable more people to apply and gain from it. I have found that writing verbatim teaching scripts for an imagined audience can be just as effective as oral teaching (Lim, Wong, & Lim, 2021, Applied Cognitive Psychology), while producing durable learning benefits in the classroom (Lim, Wong, & Visessuvanapoom, 2026, Journal of Experimental Education).
Further, I have demonstrated how written teaching can be combined with deliberate erring via learning-by-misteaching to yield additional gains for argumentative reasoning (Wong, 2025, Journal of Educational Psychology). Altogether, these findings unveil how potent techniques can be strategically integrated and translated to improve real-world learning.
Diverse Inexpensive and Effective Techniques
Leveraging cognitive science principles, my early work explored a diverse range of simple and inexpensive techniques to enhance complex, higher order learning outcomes.
My research has shown that retrieving information from memory improves analogical problem-solving (Wong, Ng, Tempel, & Lim, 2019, Journal of Experimental Education). When supplemented with a novel metacognitive monitoring intervention—judgments of higher order learning (JOL+), retrieval practice can also boost argumentative reasoning (Wong & Lim, 2019, JEP: Applied). To understand why this technique works, I have examined how its benefits are driven by cognitive mechanisms such as reduced mind-wandering (Wong & Lim, 2022, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review).
In the domain of musical learning, I have further found that engaging in mental imagery fosters young children's creativity when composing music (Wong & Lim, 2017, PLoS ONE). My work has also demonstrated that interleaving is an effective technique when learning music composers' styles (Wong, Low, Kang, & Lim, 2020, Journal of Research in Music Education) and melodic musical intervals (Wong, Chen, & Lim, 2021, Psychology of Music).
Stepping into the new digital world of education ahead, I have explored intersections of learning with technology (Wong & Lim, 2023, JEP: Applied), including effective human–AI collaboration for learning gains (Wong & Qiu, 2026, Educational Psychology Review). Taken together, this body of work reveals not only practical insights on educational design, but also theoretical insights on the cognitive processes that support human learning.