Lecture 1: Rates of Learning

Question 1

What did Ebbinghaus study?

Answer 1

The scientific study of learning and memory, only tested one participant, himself.
- used nonsense syllables
- wanted to explore and describe the rate of learning and forgetting

Question 2

what is the total time hypothesis?

Answer 2

the amount learned is a function of the time spent learning

Question 3

what was the ebbinghaus study?

Answer 3

> lists of 16 syllables
learned a new list each day - reciting the syllables at a constant rate
24 hours later he recorded how much more time (number of trials) he needed to relearn the list
Resulted in the conclusion that learning is linearly related to amount of study - PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Question 4

what drives brain plasticity?

Answer 4

practice

Question 5

what study did Maguire, 2000 conduct?

Answer 5

the London Taxi Driver study: compared brain volume in taxi drivers relative to healthy controls.
> posterior hippocampus of taxi drivers was consistently larger
> size of hippocampus was correlated to time they spent as taxi drivers - expertise vs new learners

Question 6

What does Draganski et al., 2006 study?

Answer 6

Medical students scanned at three intervals before, during and after intensive exams.
Result: Increases in gray matter volume in the parietal cortex and posterior hippocampus - remained even 3 months after studying

Question 7

What did the results of Draginski’s study tell us?

Answer 7

Changes in the brain are assumed to be part of the process that optimises learning, structural changes are NOT perceptual.
Over time, the brain renormalises the volume in the regions enhanced by practice.

Question 8

What is the expansions normalisation hypothesis?

Answer 8

Some structural changes (related to learning a task) may be selected and others dropped.

Question 9

What will simple repetition (no organisation) lead to?

Answer 9

Will not lead to learning - memory and attention are selective, even after extensive practice/exposure information is not registered if not deemed important.

Question 10

What is distributed practice?

Answer 10

> Distribute learning trials sparsely across a period of time
Faster improvement rates of learning and less forgetting

Question 11

What are some caveats of distributed practice?

Answer 11

> Takes longer, which is not always practical or convenient
Individuals may feel “less efficient”

Question 12

Is there any experimental evidence for distributed practice?

Answer 12

Yes, from Melton, 1970. Conducted a study of spaced learning of word stimuli that increases subsequent recall.
A list of words were presented to ppts, some once and some twice - those twice appeared after variable lags [1.3s, 2.3s …], also varied the duration of presentation of each word.

Results;
- benefits to memory occur despite total study time was the same between 2 word presentations
- only spacing differed

Question 13

What is lag effect?

Answer 13

Benefit of repeated study increases as the lag between study occasions increases

Question 14

What is deficient processing?

Answer 14

Where less attention is payed to recently encountered stimuli. After a long delay, stimuli will attract more attention.

Question 15

What is encoding variability?

Answer 15

> Multiple encoding instances create richer associations
Variety of ways stimulus has been encoded

Question 16

What is study-phase retrieval?

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Is there any neuroimaging evidence for distributed practice?

Answer 17

Hypotheses:
EV : Remembered items show different brain activity patterns across repetitions.
SPR : Brain activation patterns are highly similar from repetition to repetition.

Findings:
The SPR hypothesis is favoured by the data.
Retrieval of previous encounter - indicated by the replication of the same brain patterns - ensures better memory

Question 18

What is the testing effect?

Answer 18

Successfully generating items strenghtens memory more than passive presentation, the more likely it will be recalled and strengthened.
Feedback:
> errors in recall when training may affect later recall unless corrective feedback is provided
> the erroneous retrieval may be strengthened in memory

Question 19

What is the spacing effect?

Answer 19

Spaced presentation enhances memory. Based on this alone, study and test should be separated as much as possible.

Question 20

How does motivation affect learning?

Answer 20

May make learning more efficient in automatic and strategic ways.

Question 21

How does automatic motivation affect learning?

Answer 21

External (reward etc.,) or internal (curiosity etc.,) motives prior to exposure of stimuli improves memory even when time spent studying or strategies used are controlled.

Question 22

How does strategic motivation affect learning?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

How does curiosity [internal] affect learning?

Answer 23

Creates a powerful state that favours encoding of new information (even incidental).

Question 24

What is hebbian learning, and how does it work?

Answer 24

It is an explanation of learning, it involves the strengthening the connections of co-active neurons.
- neurons repeatedly become excited in synchrony
- the chemistry of the synapse between neurons changes
- each one becomes more likely to have action potential when the other does
- other factors that may contribute to learning: intrinsic plasticity within neurons, which makes it more likely for a neuron to generate an action potential (Lisman et al., 2017)

Question 25

Is there neurobiological evidence for Hebb’s idea?

Answer 25

Yes
> Bliss and Lomo (1973), stimulated axonal pathways, led to lasting increases in electrical potentials generation in the post-synaptic neurons = long-term potentiation
> LTM strongly represented in hippocampus and surrounding regions associated with long term memory
> also occur in the amygdala supporting emotion based learning and classical conditioning