Cognition Lecture 1

Cognition Lecture 1

1. Learning

   • Ebbinghaus
     • Scientific study of learning and memory
     • Tested only himself
       • Nonsense syllables (consonant-vowel-consonant items)
     • Explored rate of learning and forgetting
   • Total Time Hypothesis
     • Amount learned is a function of the time spent learning
     • Learning linearly related to amount of study
     • Practice Makes Perfect
       • Rule of thumb for over a century
       • Effect of extensive practice levels out (Ericsson, 2013)
       • Drives structural plasticity
         • Maguire et al (2000) - Posterior hippocampus was consistently larger in taxi drivers, size correlated to length of time spent as taxi drivers
         • Draganski et al. (2006) - increases in grey matter volume in parietal cortex and hippocampus in medical students taking exams - remained 3 months after
         • Expansions normalisation hypothesis
           • Some structural changes may be selected (e.g. learning a task) and others dropped
   • Repetition
     • Simple repetition with no attempt to organise the material may not lead to learning
       • Complex and useless information
       • Selective nature of memory and attention
   • Distributed Practice
     • Distribute learning trials sparsely across a period of time
     • Caveats
       • Takes longer
       • May feel "less efficient"
     • Melton (1970) - benefits to memory occur with distributed practice despite total study time remaining the same
       • Lag effect
     • Baddeley and Longman (1978) - participants who trained for 1 hour a day for 11 weeks improved the most with typing
     • Kornell and Bjork (2008) - spaced presentation led to better identification of paintings by same artist
       • Participants reported superiority of massed learning
     • Theories
       • Deficient Processing
         • Less attention is paid to recently-encountered stimuli
       • Encoding variability
         • Multiple encoding instances create richer associations
       • Study-phase retrieval
         • Second presentation is a reminder of previous one - strengthens memory
       • Xue et al. (2010) - study-phase retrieval is favoured by the data
   • Testing/Generation Effect
     • Karpicke and Roediger (2008) - continuous testing lead to better recall. No continuous testing meant little recall
     • Having to retrieve the answer, rather than being presented with it, leads to greater retention
     • Feedback
       • Errors in recall may affect later recall unless corrective feedback is provided
       • Erroneous retrieval may be strengthened
       • Butler and Roediger (2008) - retrieval practice combined with feedback had biggest effect on memory
     • Karpicke and Blunt (2011) - testing promoted superior memory for facts but also inferential questions
       • Pps thought this method was least effective
   • Expanding Retrieval Method
     • Spacing Effect
       • Spaced presentation enhances memory
     • Testing effect
       • Successfully generating items strengthens memory
     • Spaced study-test cycles

2. Motivation

   • Motivation to learn makes learning more efficient
     • Automatic - motives prior to exposure improves memory
     • Strategic - people use deeper memorisation techniques for high value items
   • Curiosity
     • How curious you are to learn something affects internal motivation
     • Gruber et al. (2014) - being curious enhanced memory for incidental material

3. Brain and Learning

   • Hebbian Learning
     • Strengthening the connections of co-active neurons
       • "Neurons that fire together, wire together"
     • Long-Term Potentiation
       • Bliss and Lomo (1973) - stimulated axonal pathways caused lasting increases in electric potentials in post-synaptic neurons
       • Strong representation in hippocampus and surrounding regions - LTM!
       • Amygdala - emotion-based learning and classical conditioning