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Unlocking Your Learner's Brains:

The Science of Engaging Training

While many learning professionals focus on content and delivery, the real key to effective learning lies in understanding how people actually process information. And it all starts with attention.

Grab Attention Instantly: Why First Impressions Are EVERYTHING

Here’s something that should change how you think about learning design: Research shows that people form first impressions in just 50 milliseconds (or less). That’s faster than the blink of an eye. In those first crucial milliseconds, learners make snap judgments about whether your content is worth their attention, easy to understand, and relevant to their needs.

These instant impressions aren’t just surface-level reactions – they create a “halo effect” that influences how learners engage with all your content that follows. A strong first impression can help learners overlook minor flaws later, while a poor one can make them skeptical of even your best material. This means those first moments aren’t just important – they’re crucial for learning success.

Attention is Precious: Design Training That Earns It

Attention is essentially brain energy we recruit to process information. While we can control some attention consciously (like focusing on this paragraph), much of it operates automatically. Think about the last time a movement caught your eye, or a sudden noise made you jump – that’s your brain’s reflexive attention system at work.

Here’s what makes this crucial for learning design: Attention requires significant energy, burning valuable oxygen and glucose in the brain. That’s why it’s both precious and fragile. As L&D professionals, we often overestimate how much attention learners can devote to our content. The reality? People aren’t naturally motivated to engage with training materials unless we make them compelling

Intuitive vs. Deliberative: Engage Both Thinking Systems for Maximum Impact

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman popularized the understanding that we have two distinct thinking systems:

System 1 (Intuitive Thinking)

• Automatic and unconscious
• Requires minimal mental resources
• Makes quick, intuitive decisions
• Rules most of our daily choices
• Processes 11,000,000 bytes of data per second

System 2 (Deliberative Thinking)

• More intentional and conscious
• Needs significant mental resources
• Handles complex reasoning
• Gets involved in careful analysis
• Processes 40 bytes of data per second

Here’s the challenge for L&D: Most training programs try to engage deliberative thinking first, using text-heavy content and complex explanations. But research shows this approach often fails because it doesn’t first capture our intuitive attention.

Brain-Friendly Learning: Work WITH How People Think

Your brain weighs only about three pounds—roughly 2% of your body mass—but it demands a staggering 20% of your body’s energy, more than any other organ. To manage this high energy cost, the brain has evolved efficient processing patterns, relying on heuristics—mental shortcuts that help us make quick decisions without expending too much effort.

While these shortcuts aren’t always perfect, they allow us to process vast amounts of information efficiently, helping us navigate the world without constant mental overload. Understanding these patterns is key to designing learning experiences that align with how the brain naturally processes information.

Cognitive Secrets: Design Training That Aligns with How We Think

Over decades of research, scientists have ​identified numerous cognitive biases that shape our decisions​. While these biases can seem complex, they tend to cluster into six fundamental “meta-biases” that serve as powerful attention triggers. These biases determine what information captures and holds our focus, shaping how we engage with content.

For L&D professionals, understanding these meta-biases—Personal, Contrastable, Tangible, Memorable, Visual, and Emotional—provides a blueprint for designing training that grabs attention and sustains engagement. By leveraging these natural cognitive tendencies, we can create learning experiences that not only attract learners but also improve retention and drive real behavior change.

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6 Ways to Make Your Training Unforgettable

Let’s examine each attention trigger in detail and explore how to leverage it in your learning designs. These triggers work together to influence how information is processed, attended to, and remembered:

Personal: Make It About Them

When content feels personally relevant, our cognitive processing prioritizes it for attention. This isn’t just preference—it’s a fundamental aspect of information processing. We’re naturally attuned to information that could affect our wellbeing, success, or status.

How to apply it:

• Start with their challenges, not your content
• Use “you” language consistently
• Show clear connections to their daily work
• Provide examples from their specific context
• Share stories featuring people in similar roles

For example, instead of opening with “Today we’ll learn about cybersecurity,” try “Your password choices today could protect—or expose—your team’s most sensitive data.”

Contrastable: Make Differences Clear

Our perceptual systems are particularly sensitive to contrast—it helps us process information more efficiently and make quicker decisions. This is why comparative examples are so effective for learning.

How to leverage contrast:

• Use visual comparisons to highlight key points
• Show clear “right vs. wrong” examples
• Demonstrate “current state vs. future state”
• Create clear distinctions between options Highlight improvements and transformations

By highlighting contrasts and comparisons, you can make information more digestible and decision-making easier for learners.

Tangible: Make It Concrete

Abstract concepts require more cognitive resources to process. Concrete, tangible information typically requires less processing effort and integrates more readily with existing knowledge.

Make your content more tangible by:

• Using specific examples instead of general concepts
• Including real-world applications
• Providing concrete evidence and proof points
• Creating hands-on exercises and demonstrations
• Sharing actual scenarios and case studies

Remember: If learners struggle to envision how to apply a concept, they’ll struggle to remember it.

Memorable: Make It Stick

Memory formation is selective and influenced by multiple factors. Information is more likely to be encoded and retained when it’s distinctive and emotionally relevant.

Keys to memorability:

• Open with an attention-grabbing hook
• Use unexpected elements or surprising facts
• Create clear, memorable frameworks
• End with strong closing points
• Build in repetition through different formats

Research shows people remember more when information is presented in a story format versus straight facts.

Visual: Show, Don’t Just Tell

Nearly one-third of the human brain’s cortex is dedicated to visual processing, allowing us to absorb and analyze images with remarkable speed and efficiency, far surpassing the rate at which we process text.

Maximize visual impact by:

• Leading with strong, relevant images
• Using graphs and charts to clarify data
• Creating clear visual hierarchies
• Including movement and animation strategically
• Reducing text density Consider this:

Learners remember only 10% of what they hear three days later, but that jumps to 65% when paired with relevant images.

Emotional: Make It Meaningful

Emotions play a crucial role in information processing and decision-making. As neuroscientist Antonio Damasio notes, emotional processing is fundamentally intertwined with cognitive processing, not separate from it.

Create emotional connections by:

• Acknowledging challenges and frustrations
• Sharing authentic stories and experiences
• Building in moments of discovery
• Celebrating progress and achievements
• Using humor appropriately

Studies show that emotional engagement can significantly increase knowledge retention.

Putting It All Together

These stimuli work most effectively when combined thoughtfully. Consider how a successful safety training program might:

• Open with a personal story (Personal/Emotional)
• Show clear safe vs. unsafe examples (Contrastable)
• Provide specific procedures to follow (Tangible)
• Include striking visuals of proper techniques (Visual)
• Structure content for easy recall (Memorable)
• Build in pride in safety culture (Emotional)

Creating Brain-Friendly Learning

To create truly effective learning experiences, we need to work with these natural tendencies rather than against them. This means:

• Capturing attention through Intuitive (System 1) thinking first
• Making content immediately relevant and personally meaningful
• Using visual elements strategically
• Creating clear contrasts and comparisons
• Making information tangible and concrete
• Building in emotional connections

Remember: The goal isn’t to manipulate learners but to work with their natural cognitive processes. When we align our design with how people naturally process information, learning becomes both easier and more effective.

By understanding and thoughtfully applying these principles, you can create learning experiences that not only capture attention but also drive real behavior change. The key is to use them in service of genuine learning objectives, not just for effect.

Now it's your turn!

How might you change something in your learning programs to leverage these principles and create more engaging and effective learning experiences?
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Hit "Reply" and let us know or share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn.

Thanks for reading!
Mike & Bianca

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PS - You can join others conversations like this one by using the #TrainLikeAMarketer hashtag.

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