L18 - Category Learning 2 Flashcards
1
Q
What is the Inert Knowledge Problem (Whitehead, 1929)?
A
- The process of understanding by learners does not happen to that extent where the knowledge can be used for effective problem-solving in real situations.
2
Q
What is ‘desirable difficulty’?
A
- When an increase in difficulty/mental effort is beneficial for learning.
3
Q
What is the best method of quizzing to foster learning?
A
- Transfer quizzes (testing relational categories) help both learning and definition.
- Definition quizzes only help with learning the definition. They do not help transfer.
4
Q
What is interleaving?
A
- Interleaving refers to broken practice/mixing examples from different categories.
- This is in contrast to massed/blocked practice common in most textbooks (one category at a time).
- Massed practice DOES NOT require you to first categorise the problem.
- Interleaving forces categorisation first.
5
Q
Are interleaving and desirable difficulties always the best study methods?
A
- Work from Rob Goldstone’s lab has shown that sometimes students self-selecting a blocking strategy can be beneficial, especially when within-category items are rather distinct from each other.
- John Sweller has argued that desirable difficulties are not desirable when the material is so complex that it intrinsically maxes out working-memory capacity. Then any extra difficulty from learning- mode is harmful.