The magic of a break. For a short time put your work aside and do something else. At least while struggling with verbal learning tasks, such breaks should be helpful and improve your memory. The “spacing effect” as it is called in memory literature, refers to the fact that spatial learning (with temporal lags between the learning session) results in greater retention accuracy and less forgetting compared to massed learning (no lags). There are many different theories why “spatial learning” works. Maybe it works because that the cues which are present in the different learning session variate (a different environment, a different mood) and improve learning. And/or it is just this cycle between forgetting (in the lags) and recall (during the session) which strength the memory. Whatever it is: does it work for any type of learning? Most experiments focus on verbal learning. For motor learning the studies show variating results. Melody Wiseheart (great name by the way) and colleagues analysed if there is a spacing effect while learning to play the piano. They asked students with varying music education to perform two tasks: One focuses on the “translation” from music sheets to the right finger movement on the piano keyboard, the other on the auditory feedback to reproduce a certain melody with right volume and rhythm. Interestingly, massed learning and spatial learning strategy showed both the same learning performance in both tests. Maybe the time lags (max 15min) were to short. But at least it shows, that the spacing effect may vary with the learning task. “Lack of spacing effects during piano learning”
Wiseheart M, D’Souza AA, Chae J (2017) PLoS ONE 12(8): e0182986.
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Evoked-response audiometry (or electric-response audiometry, ERA) is a collective term for techniques which record electrical activity response of the auditory pathway to auditory signals. These techniques allow conclusions about the hearing ability of the subject. According to the website corticalera.com, “the earliest report of relevance was that of Davis who identified the auditory cortical evoked response in 1939 although changes in the EEG evoked by a loud sound had been observed by Berger a decade earlier.” The first ERA technique was the cortical ERA (CERA) in which the cortical response is recorded from the vertex. Many tests had to be done for optimising the detection and analysis of the small bio-electronic signals. One of these tests is described in the paper of the day: “Validation of Evoked-Response Audiometry (Era) in Deaf Children” by Hallowed Davis (1966). It compares the ERA results with “old” testing methods for hearing ability which relied on behaviour signal to auditory signal. The measured ERA volume threshold for different auditory signals for different frequences differed from the voluntary thresholds (measured by behavioral response) just by 0.1dB. So no wonder that cortical ERA was in “widespread clinical use” just a handful of years later (in the 1970s). “Validation of Evoked-Response Audiometry (Era) in Deaf Children”
Hallowed Davis International audiology 5.2 (1966): 77-81 Teleology… don’t confuse that with theology… is a doctrine which deals with the idea that all living and processes in nature follow a certain purpose and are goal orientated. Children are especial receptible for teological explanations. “When asked about properties of natural entities like pointy rocks, children prefer teleological explanations over physical–causal ones, endorsing that rocks are pointy ‘so that animals won’t sit on them’, not because ‘’bits of stuff piled up over time’.” With increasing age this preference to explanations which satisfy the beliefs about intentional causality in nature are replaced by rational explanations. However, people suffering from Alzheimer disease prefer teleological explanations again. So maybe rational explanations don’t replace but cover the teleological explanation. That would mean that teleological explanatory is a sort of explanatory default which can be reactivated when the causal knowledge is damaged. Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rossett tested this hypothesis of the co-existence of teleological and rational explanation. They predicted: “Even healthy, schooled adults should display scientifically unwarranted promiscuous teleological intuitions when their capacity to inhibit more primary purpose-based intuitions is impaired by processing demands”. So they designed a test were the participants had to decide if a explanation is good or bad (right or wrong). Indeed they could show that without time limit the participants (university students) prefer rational explanations but “in speeded conditions judged significantly more scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations as correct (e.g., ‘‘the sun radiates heat because warmth nurtures life”)”. So maybe the rational thinking is really just covering our default assumption that in nature everything is connected with each other and everything has a certain function in this interplay? No wonder as the “perfect” evolutionary adaptation of organisms to their environments makes it sometimes hard to keep in mind that it is all a result of random mutation and selection. "The Human Function Compunction: Teleological explanation in adults."
Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rossett, 2009 Cognition 111.1 (2009): 138-143. In order to explore the temporary representation of visual and spatial information, Adrian X. Ellis, Sergio Della Sala and Robert H. Logie (1995) published a paper in which they summed up all evidences for visuo-spatial working memory. Visual and spatial information about the environment are needed for planning interactions “and for predictions as to the outcome of external events and of our own actions”. Therefore it is somehow connected to the planning of movement and working memory. Indeed, there are studies based on dual task interference techniques showing that the control and/or production of movement is overlapping to some extent with the cognitive functions required for mental imaging task. Doing a movement task parallel to a mental imaging task decreases the performance of the mental imaging more as a comparable not-mental-imaging second task. That sounds all quite complicated. Lets just focus on the point that somehow planning movement and mental imaging are connected because “production of a movement to a target clearly requires some representation of where the target is in relation to the body or limb involved”. However, as the review paper of Ellis et al. points out: the visual-spatial representation does not have to be conscious. Unilateral spatial neglect is a neuropsychological condition in which a person fails to attend to the side opposite a brain lesion. Studies showed that people with the unilateral neglect fail to see differences between the picture of a chimeric animal (where front part of an animal is connected to a back part of a different animal… see example) and the picture of the same animal without any chimeric modulation, as long as the wrong “back” part is on the site they fail to attend to. In the example picture this means a person which neglect the left side will not be able to point out any difference between this picture and the picture of just a lying cat. However, if you ask the person which picture looks more like a fish, there is a large chance the person is showing to the chimeric picture. That shows that the visual-spatial representation does not have to be conscious in order to do a controlled (planned) movement like pointing to a certain picture. The conclusion of Ellis et al. is that “clearly the relationship between implicit processing, planning of action and the nature of the representation in working memory is an area that is ripe for further exploration.” Indeed, it seems like there was further exploration of this topic after this paper (in 1995). At least there was a book published about the visuo-spatial working memory in 2014 (Robert H. Logie, Psychology Press). So it seems like the visuo-spatial working memory theory still holds. "The Bailiwick of visuo-spatial working memory: evidence from unilateral spatial neglect"
Adrian X. Ellis, Sergio Della Sala and Robert H. Logie Cognitive Brain Research 3.2 (1996): 71-78. |
IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
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