The more I know about something, the easier it is to learn more about it, discuss

Question 1

Paragraph 1

Answer 1

• “Developing learning events for novices using the same instructional strategies as you do for someone who has a high level of knowledge in a content area will not be as effective” - Knapp (2012)
• Differences in knowledge acquisition depending on knowledge level
• Some things easier to learn than others
• Interesting to psychologists as paramount to developing effective educational strategies

Question 2

2nd paragraph

Answer 2

• Norman (1982) modes of skill acquisition
• Skill accretion, skill structuring, learning by analogy, skill tuning
• If all stages are needed to learn a skill, then prior knowledge will accelerate this
• Learning by analogy, schemata adapted more quickly

Question 3

3rd paragraph

Answer 3

• Ericsson and Charness (1994) graph
• Rapid progress
• Plateaus contradict the statement

Question 4

4th paragraph

Answer 4

• Reder, Liu, Keinath & Popov (2016) easier to learn with familiar stimuli, easier to build and comprehend knowledge
• Chiesi (1980) ppts with high knowledge of baseball were able to recall passage better, faster, forget less
• Greater knowledge people able to learn new knowledge easier than others

Question 5

5th paragraph

Answer 5

• Fenker & Schutze (2008) showed test subjects photographs and used fMRI
• Also given words to sort according to meaning
• Shown new images next day, ppts recalled more words in the novel images group
• Hippocampus novelty detector, compares sensory knowledge with pre-existing knowledge, if they differ, hippocampus sense pulse of dopamine to SN and VTA in midbrain, nerve fibres trigger further dopamine release
• Li, Cullen, Anwyl & Rowan (2003) dopamine in hippocampus of rats activates synapses enhancing LTM
• Bunzeck & Duzel (2006) presented humans with familiar images and second group with mixture of novel and familiar (in fMRI)
• Showed greater activity in SN and VTA when novel images are shown
• Novelty enhances memory and learning, contradicts statement

Question 6

6th paragraph

Answer 6

• Some merit to statement
• Existing schemata enhancing ease of knowledge acquisition
• Evidence inconclusive
• Some cases familiarity increases knowledge acquisition
• Not in all circumstances
• If statement was true, familiar stimuli would always enhance memory
• Further factors involved
• Not linear relationship