Learning Transfer, Consolidation and Interference

Learning Transfer, Consolidation and Interference

1. Transfer of Learning

   • Transfer of learning refers to the change in response to a novel task after experiencing a prior task. Essentially it means that you become better at new tasks because you're good at similar tasks.
     • Key Pressing tasks have shown this transfer of learning between tasks, even though the tasks require different arm and finger movements. This could be indicative that the underlying mental representations of one task can be transferred to another, and that the motor plan is independent of the motor task.
       • Palmer & Meyer (2000)
         • Research question: Does a pianist's ability to perform one musical piece affect their ability to perform another? And if so are the motor or conceptual requirements the same?
           • Apparently as skill increases then the mental representations become disassociated from the motor action
             • READ THIS PAPER!
       • Types of Transfer:
         • Positive Transfer: When a previously practiced task allows for quicker or better performance on a novel task because the components/contexts of both tasks are the same.
         • Negative Transfer: When having previously practiced a task has a negative impact on being able to perform a novel task. This can happen because the context of the two tasks are similar but the motor requirements are different (e.g. snowboarding and skiing)

2. Consolidation

   • Memory consolidation is the end result of a new and fragile memory becoming robust within the mind. Memory consolidation is aided by offline processing along with online practice!
     • There are two behavioural phenomenon related to procedural memory: Offline improvement (improvement of a skill between practice sessions that is usually dependent on/enhanced by sleep) and Memory Stabilisation (the reduction of fragility in a memory trace after the aquisition of a novel skill.
       • There are usually improvements in speed and accuracy in motor skills after practice, but improvements after sleep increase further! Usually depends on amount of certain types of sleep experienced (REM). Appears to be related to neurophysiological changes in the brain during sleep such as the release of acetylcholine.
         • Walker et al. 2002
           • Tested participants on finger tapping pattern task after interval. One group tested after sleep and one without sleep. The sleep group were found to be 15% faster at the task after sleep!
         • Fischer et al. 2002
           • Studied non-musicians to see what effect sleep and the time of day that they retained info would have on their performance in a finger tapping task
             • Found that performance was improved most for participants who slept during the day, followed by those who slept at night after learning skill. Awake participants performed worse, especially those who stayed up at night. Assumedly they lost sleep!
         • Fischer et al. 2005
           • Finger to thumb opposition task, non musicians, 48 retention period.
             • Those who slept for both nights performed 15.6% better than those who only slept one night.
               • Assumedly this is the same study: Brain activity for retrieval areas reduced after sleep compared to training, no change after waking interval! Slight increase of activity in left superior parietal cortex, which could be related to automated responses. This would indicate that sleep improves the efficiency of motor functions in the brain and takes up less space.
         • Amy et al. (2006)
           • Recreated sleep experiments with keyboard players to see if the same results occurred. Did they? We may never know.
         • Sleep independent improvements?
           • Remember how we said earlier that there were two parts to procedural learning? Conscious and unconscious? Well, it may turn out that the unconscious procedural learning may be improved regardless of whether or not you're asleep! In a Serial Reaction Time Task, improvements were similar after daytime and nighttime intervals.
           • Robertson et al. 2005
             • rTMS disruption over M1 directly after learning disrupted wakeful dependent learning, but not sleep dependent learning!

3. Interference

   • Learning a new task can interfere the recall and learning of a previous task. This is called retroactive (interferes with consolidation) and proactive (interferes with retrieval) interference. This happens because the previous task has not been stabilized! Interference is reduced as latency between tasks increases.
     • Learning task B directly after task A retroactively interferes with task B, however a 6 hour waking gap or 1 hour nap in between the two both show sleep-dependent enhancement!
     • Strangely enough, learning tasks in smaller increments instead of large blocks tends to result in better learning. So perhaps I should stop learning this way? Oh who knows?