Learning

Question 1

How are learning and memory interrelated?

Answer 1

• Different kinds of learning lead to different kinds of memory
• Capacity to retrieve from memory (or not) depends on how we learned something

Question 2

What is learning?

Answer 2

Neuronal/ brain change due to experience

Question 3

What is memory?

Answer 3

Storage and reactivation of memory

Question 4

What did Ebbinghaus do?

Answer 4

• Scientific study of learning and memory
• Tested only one subject – himself
  § Nonsense syllables (consonant-vowel-consonant items, e.g., caz, wux)
  § Avoided associations with real words
  Explored the rate of learning and forgetting

Question 5

What is the total time hypothesis about the rate of learning?

Answer 5

The amount learned is a function of the time spent learning (practice)

Question 6

What was Ebbinghaus’s rate of learning experiment and result?

Answer 6

• Experiment:
• Lists of 16 syllables
• Learned a new list each day – reciting syllables at a constant rate
• 24 hours later he recorded how much more time (number of trials) he needed to relearn the list
• Result:
• Learning linearly related to amount of study
• ‘practice makes perfect

Question 7

What does the total time hypothesis state in regards to the brain?

Answer 7

• Practice drives brain plasticity
  § Brain undergoes structural changes in response to learning or environmental demands
  § Studies exploring structural changes in the brain due to expertise (long practice) or new learning

Question 8

What is the expertise and brain plasticity London taxi drivers study?

Answer 8

• Compared brain volume in taxi drivers relative to healthy controls
• The posterior hippocampus of the taxi drivers was consistently larger
  The size of the posterior hippocampus significantly correlated with the time they have spent as taxi drivers

Question 9

What is the study with medical students about brain plasticity?

Answer 9

• Experiment:
• Medical students scanned at three intervals
• Before, during and after intensive exams
• Result:
• Increases in grey matter volume in the parietal cortex (A) and in the posterior hippocampus (B)
• These remained even three months after studying
  Shows that after intense study there are significant structural changes that remain in the brain

Question 10

When practice drives structural plasticity is it permenant?

Answer 10

• Over time, the brain renormalises the volume in the regions enhanced by practice
• Some structural changes (related to learning a task) may be selected and others dropped (expansions normalisation hypothesis)

Question 11

Will repetition lead to learning?

Answer 11

• Simple repetition with no attempt to organise the material might not lead to learning
• Especially if information is complex and is not perceived as useful
• Memory and attention are very selective – even after extensive practice/ exposure information is not registered if not deemed important

Question 12

What is distributed practice and what are it’s caveats?

Answer 12

• Distribute learning trials sparsely across a period of time
• Faster improvement rates of learning and less forgetting
• Caveats:
• Distributed practice takes longer (i.e. less actual time but more days) – not always practical or convenient
• Individuals may feel ‘less efficient’

Question 13

What was the distributed practice experiment and results?

Answer 13

• Experiment:
• List of words (one at a time), some presented once and some twice
• Those presented twice appeared after variable lags (from 0 to 40 intervening words)
• Also varied the duration of the presentation of each word (1.3s, 2.3s, 4.3s)
• Results
• Lowest recall with words only presented once: but the greater the time the words were shown for the greater the recall (total time hypothesis)
• Presenting words twice increased recall in general
• Compared to words repeated twice with no intervening words (lag), adding intervening words leads to better recall later on for all conditions
• Benefits to memory occur despite total study time was the same between 2 word presentations
• Only the spacing differed

Question 14

What is the lag effect and what is it related to?

Answer 14

• the lag effect is related to distributed practice

- Lag effect = benefit of repeated study increases as the lag between study occasions increases

Question 15

What is the deficient processing theory of distributed practice?

Answer 15

· Less attention is payed to recently encountered stimuli

After a longer delay stimuli attract more attention

Question 16

What is the encoding variability theory of distributed practice?

Answer 16

· Multiple encoding instances create richer associations

Variety of ways stimulus has been encoded

Question 17

What is the study-phase retrieval theory of distributed practice?

Answer 17

· Second presentation is a reminded of the previous occurrence
· This act strengthens memory for the item
· Bigger benefits when memory is not recent (more effortful)

Question 18

Does evidence from neuroimaging show evidence for the encoding variability hypothesis or the study-phase retrieval hypothesis?

Answer 18

• Encoding variability: Remembered items show different brain activity patterns across repetitions
• Study-phase retrieval: Brain activation patterns are highly similar from repetition to repetition
• Finding
• The study-phase retrieval hypothesis is favoured by the data

Question 19

What is the testing/ generation effect?

Answer 19

Learn more efficiently when generating the items yourself

Question 20

What is the experiment to do with the test/ generation effect?

Answer 20

• To showcase the importance of testing they assigned 4 groups to learn Swahili-English word pairs over the course of a week
• Group 1 (ST): word pairs repeatedly studied and tested
• Group 2 (SnTn): after successful recall, the word was not studied or tested further
• Group 3 (STn): After successful recall, the word was not tested (they continued to be studied)
• Group 4 (SnT): After successful recall, the word was not studied (they continued to be tested)
• Results:
• The rate of learning did not differ across the four groups
• The level of retention was the highest for groups 1 and 4 (where testing continued) about 8% recall
• The level of retention was about 4% with no testing
• Conclusion:
  The presence of tests had a major effect on what was remembered one week later.

Question 21

What is the testing effect?

Answer 21

The effect shows that having to retrieve the answer, rather than being presented with, leads to greater retention

Question 22

Why is feedback when testing important?

Answer 22

• Errors in recall when training may affect later recall unless corrective feedback is provided
  The erroneous retrieval may be strengthened in memory
  § Successfully generating items strengthens memory than passive presentation
  § The sooner an item is tested after initial presentation, the more likely it will be recalled and strengthened

Question 23

What is the spacing effect?

Answer 23

Spaced presentation enhances memory

Question 24

What is the expanding retrieval method?

Answer 24

Combination of spacing effect and testing effect

Question 25

What is the effect of motivation?

Answer 25

Motivation to learn may make learning more efficient in both automatic and strategic ways

Question 26

What is automatic motivation?

Answer 26

• External (e.g. reward) or internal (e.g. curiosity) motivated prior to exposure to stimuli improves memory even when time spent studying or strategies used are controlled

Question 27

What is strategic motivation?

Answer 27

• People use deeper and more elaborate memorisation strategies for high value items

Question 28

What is Hebbian learning?

Answer 28

• Learning involves strengthening the connections of co-active neurons
• Stimulus input activates subset of neurons
• This strengthens the connections between co-active neurons
  Activation flows along the strengthened connections

Question 29

What is long-term potentiation?

Answer 29

• Neurobiological evidence for Hebb’s idea
• Bliss and Lomo (1973) stimulated axonal pathways led to lasting increases in the electrical potentials generated in post-synaptic neurons = long-term potentiation (LTP)
• LTP strongly represented in the hippocampus and surrounding regions associated with long-term memory
  Also occur in the amygdala supporting emotion-based learning and classical conditioning

Question 30

Apart from long term potentiation what other factors pay contribute to learning?

Answer 30

intrinsic plasticity within neurons, which makes it more likely for a neuron to generate an action potential

Question 31

What is the importance of the hippocampus in learning?

Answer 31

LTP has been described as the neural signature of learning in the hippocampu

Question 32

Give a summary of learning

Answer 32

· Practice is important but not always the most efficient way of learning
· Learning is best when it is distributed and is tested at intervals
· Factors that affect internal or external motivation can enhance learning
· In the brain learning depends on long-term potentiation