Learning

 

Terms

• 1 hour day
• 10k hours
• act of will
• amount learned
• analogies
• anecdotal evidence
• Aristotle
• artificial selection
• association
• associationism
• Baddeley, Alan
• between-list associations
• blank slate
• body language
• bonds
• CCC (consonant-consonant-consonant)
• classical conditioning
• Clever Hans
• color vision
• common ancestors
• complete memory
• complete this sentence
• contiguity
• contiguous associations
• continuity of species
• contrast
• controls
• correlation
• CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant)
• Darwin, Charles
• Descartes, Rene
• difficulty
• distributed practice
• double-blind study
• dynamic view of earth
• Ebbinghaus, Hermann
• Ebbinghaus’ illusion
• economic theory
• embellished over time
• empiricists
• eugenics
• experience
• feature matching
• forgetting curve
• free will
• Galton, Francis
• healthy body
• higher mental processes
• innate ideas
• intelligence
• involuntary behavior
• involuntary cues
• laws of association
• list length
• Locke, John
• Lyell, Charles
• Mathus, Thomas
• memory
• mental capacity
• mind
• natural selection
• naturalistic observation
• nonsense words
• opposites
• overlearning
• pairings
• Pfunst, Oskar
• Plato
• postural changes
• priming
• recall
• recognition
• reflex
• remember
• repetition
• retrieval
• retrieval cues
• Romanes, George
• savings
• scarce resources
• serial position effect
• similarity
• single-blind study
• sounds
• stimuli
• survival of the fittest
• total time hypothesis
• trained mind
• van Osten, Wilheim
• virtuous character
• voluntary behavior
• wash feet in cold water
• wax tablet
• within-list associations
• witnessed by only one person
• word lists
• word-completion items
• word-completion test

Quiz

1. In philosophy and the early days of psychology, behavior was thought to be result of an:

• action potential
• assimilation
• act of will
• artifact

2. Romames is best known for his use of analogies and

• double-blind studies
• anecdotal evidence
• internal regulation
• artificial selection

3. Aristotle proposed 3 laws of:

• representation
• association
• generation
• correlation

4. A mental connection between two stimuli is a:

• blank slate
• control
• bond
• all of the above

5. Clever Hans “solved” problems by:

• calculating the mathematics accurately
• observing the trainer’s body language
• listening to the crowd
• insight

1. In philosophy and the early days of psychology, behavior was thought to be result of an:

• action potential
• assimilation
• act of will
• artifact

2. Romames is best known for his use of analogies and

• double-blind studies
• anecdotal evidence
• internal regulation
• artificial selection

3. Aristotle proposed 3 laws of:

• representation
• association
• generation
• correlation

4. A mental connection between two stimuli is a:

• blank slate
• control
• bond
• all of the above

5. Clever Hans “solved” problems by:

• calculating the mathematics accurately
• observing the trainer’s body language
• listening to the crowd
• insight

 

How to learn lists (long and short).

 

Next time you send out wedding invitations, graduation announcements or holiday cards, you’ll probably use a written list. You won’t try to do it from memory because you know you’re not very good at remembering a long list of information

When you have to remember a long list of things, here is how you do it.

Here are 5 things we’ll cover:

• Before Ebbinghaus
• Things We Already Knew
• Methodology
• Ebbinghaus’ Discoveries
• Distributed Practice

1. Before Ebbinghaus

Aristotle (384-323 BC)

Proposed 3 laws of association

• Similarity
• Contiguity
• Opposites

Descartes (1596-1650)

2 classes of behavior (dualism)

• Voluntary = free will
• Involuntary = reflexes

John Locke (1632-1704)

• No innate ideas (blank slate)
• Empiricism = ideas originate with sensory experience

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Hedonism determines voluntary behavior
• Pursue pleasure
• Avoid pain
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
• Combined 2 theories:
• Charles Lyell, the father of geology; dynamic view of Earth
• Thomas Malthus, an economist; struggle to succeed in business is the result of resource scarcity

Francis Galton (1822-1911)

2 major points:

• Intelligence is single factor. Evident in any task
• People vary in intelligence

George Romanes (1848-1894)

• Called himself a disciple & worshiper of Charles Darwin
• Sought to prove (using logic) Darwin’s concept of continuity between humans and animals
• Subjective vs. objective analyses
• Behavior is the ambassador of the mind
• Intelligence is the ability to learn
• Anecdotal evidence
• Analogous

Criticisms of anecdotal evidence

• Events witnessed by only 1 person
• Story embellishment over time
• Coincidence
• Bias to report behaviors that appear intelligent

Clever Hans, the horse

• Hans correctly answered mathematics questions by tapping his foot the correct number of time.
• He could even do fractions!
• September Commission appointed to investigate this genius horse (Pfungst, 1908)
•    Was Hans receiving cues from his trainer?
•    Commission concluded that no cues were given
•    One commission member not satisfied with conclusion
•    Conducted test with two conditions:
•       Experimenter aware of the correct answer
•       Experimenter unaware of the correct answer
•    Results:
•       Hans was correct when experimenter was aware of answer, overestimated when experimenter was unaware

2. Things We Already Knew

• Difficulty increases with length of list
• Frequent repetitions needed to learn word lists
• Serial position effect: first & last better than middle

3. Methodology

•    Used self as subject
•    Careful controls
•       list of words; one per card
•       items kept in order
•       used watch (metronome) to set the pace (1 per sec)
•       when reached end of list, paused 15 seconds
• At first, used terms of sounds
•    Later, used “nonsense words”
•    CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant). BOK.
•    CCC (consonant-consonant-consonant). BLV.
• Paradigm:
•    Day 1:  Learn list (16 to 20 items) by repeating list  8, 16, 24, 32, 42, 53, or 64 times
•    Day 2: Wait 24 hours, then relearn list to perfect repetition
•    Main score was the number of trials taken to relearn the list on Day 2

4. Ebbinghaus’ Discoveries

• Hermann Ebbinghaus
•   German psychologist
•   Quote: “Psychology has a long past but a short history”
• New findings
•    1. Difficulty and amount learned are not linear. Difficult takes much longer
•    2. Rapid forgetting of lists within first hour (not true of motor skills)
•    3. Distributed practice is best (sessions spaced out over time)
•    4. Within-list associations help. Adjacent associations are best
•    5. Best strategy is overlearning

5. Distributed Practice

Ebbinghaus

Baddeley

• Distributed practice is more efficient
• Not necessarily fastest
• One 1-hour session for 5 days week
• 11 weeks                   55 hours
• Two 2-hour sessions for 5 days week
• 4 weeks                     80 hours
• Most efficient schedule is one 1-hour session per day

 

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When we encounter one thing at a time, we can focus all of our attention on it. We can devote our effort to remembering all of its aspects and characteristics. Similarly, learning one thing is easy. To remember George Washington’s middle is Clyde, we repeat over and over. Clyde. Clyde. Clyde. Clyde.

The method works well. Now, George Washington didn’t have a middle name but we still are likely to recall this erroneous fact in the future. Repetition matters. The more often you see a company’s name, the more likely you are to recall it later. Repetition matters.

Terms

• advertising
• associated pairs
• backward chaining
• blocking
• bonds
• Calkins, Mary
• chunking
• classical conditioning
• cluster
• conditioned response
• conditioned stimulus
• cue
• distinctiveness
• Ebbinghaus, Hermann
• emotional block
• flash cards
• forward chaining
• free recall
• frequency
• Galton, Francis
• intelligence
• Jung, Carl
• linguistic patterns
• LMNOP
• long-term memory
• meaningful units
• memory
• multiple memory systems
• nodes
• paired associates
• paired word associations
• pairs
• performance
• primacy
• prompt
• recall
• recognition
• recognition errors
• reflex
• repression
• response
• right associates
• sentence completion
• serial learning
• serial position effect
• serial recall
• short-term memory
• S-R bond
• stimulus
• timed responses
• total time hypothesis
• trigger
• unconditioned response
• unconditioned stimulus
• unidirectional
• vividness
• vonRestroff effect
• word association games
• word associations

Quiz

1. Who first used sentence completion tasks:

• Ebbinghuas
• Calkins
• Plato
• Jung

 

2. Word associations are stored

• as a single unit
• in peripheral memory
• in separate locations
• for 48 hours

3. Galton used word associations and:

• timed the responses
• emotional blocks
• clustering
• ablation

4. Word associations are linguistic patterns composed of:

• nodes
• vividness
• repression
• flash cards

5. Mary Calkins paired numbers and:

• colors
• CVCs
• CCCs
• bonds

 

1. Who first used sentence completion tasks:

• Ebbinghuas
• Calkins
• Plato
• Jung

2. Word associations are stored

• as a single unit
• in peripheral memory
• in separate locations
• for 48 hours

3. Galton used word associations and:

• timed the responses
• emotional blocks
• clustering
• ablation

4. Word associations are linguistic patterns composed of:

• nodes
• vividness
• repression
• flash cards

5. Mary Calkins paired numbers and:

• colors
• CVCs
• CCCs
• bonds

 

 

 

Companies, of course, you do more than remember their name. They want you to buy the product. Or, at least, to thinking favorably of it. To achieve this goal, they pair their product and a beautiful woman (or a product and a beautiful man). The idea is that when you think of one, you’ll think of the other.

Here are 5 things we’ll cover:

• Single items
• Free association vs. focus
• Paired associates
• Paired associate tasks
• Association applications

1. Single items

• repetition
• cluster

2. Free association vs. focus

Freud

• • unstructured
  • not sure what it reveals

focused

• • meditation

3. Paired Associates

Ebbinghaus

• • sentence completion

Galton

• • word associations
  • timed responses

Jung

• • emotional block
  • repression

Linguistic patterns

• • nodes

Word association games

• • learned as single unit

4. Calkins, Mary

• studied frequency, vividness & recency
• paired colors and numbers
• frequency has the largest effect of memory
• vividness has an effect on memory
• if vividness is kept constant, recency is the best predictor of performance
  • the most recent pairings are remembered best
  • short-term memory
• unidirectional bonds
• Ebbinghaus’ total time hypothesis
  • the more times you see a stimulus, the easier it is to remember it
• vonRestroff effect
  • distinctiveness breaks the list up into small lists

5. Association Applications

• flash cards
• using associations in class
  • organize personality theories by theorist
  • learn a new fact about dopamine, more difficult to find build-in associations
• generate them yourself
• marketing and advertising
  • Coca-Cola wants you to associate the design on its can with fun
  • Pink wants you to associate its name with good merchandise
• word pairs seem to be stored as a single unit
  • LMNOP
• bonds between words tend to be unidirectional
• types of recognition errors
  • First we store a dimension, then we refine it
  • We remember it is a direction (up-down or left-right) and later learn the specific pole

 

Have you noticed that what one person thinks is delicious, another person thinks is disgusting? If I give you a cookie it is either positive reinforcement or positive punishment. Positive means that it is given, posited or deposited. Punishment indicates that you didn’t like the result. Reinforcement is when you like the result. Punishment is a very individual matter.

Here are 5 things you need remember from this class session:

• Why We Punish
• Assumptions about Punishment
• Types of Punishment
• Effects of Punishment
• Alternatives To Punishment

Terms

• accident
• assumptions
• avoidance
• bartering
• blocks behavior
• broad impact
• change viewpoint
• correction
• counterattack
• deterrent
• distancing
• effective
• fair
• fear
• good for you
• justice
• likelihood
• mediation
• models
• moral
• natural
• negative punishment
• negotiation
• positive punishment
• power play
• problem-solving opportunity
• punishment
• punishment alternatives
• punishment effects
• punishment types
• rehabilitation
• retaliation
• retribution
• right
• side effects
• suppression

Quiz

1. Time out is:

• a. negative reinforcement
• b. positive reinforcement
• c. negative punishment
• d. positive punishment

2. The biggest problem with punishment is that it:

• a. lasts long after the punisher is gone
• b. builds love and respect too quickly
• c. has bad side effects
• d. generalizes well

3. PERMA is the brain-child of:

• a. Thorndike
• b. Seligman
• c. Skinner
• d. Guthrie

4. In the original learned helplessness study:

• a. cats got out of puzzle boxes
• b. wolves roamed the forests
• c. dogs were yoked together
• d. birds were stuck together

5. Punishment impacts the:

• a. pleasure center of the brain
• b. conditioned stimulus
• c. individual’s schema
• d. whole operant

1. Time out is:

• a. negative reinforcement
• b. positive reinforcement
• c. negative punishment
• d. positive punishment

2. The biggest problem with punishment is that it:

• a. lasts long after the punisher is gone
• b. builds love and respect too quickly
• c. has bad side effects
• d. generalizes well

3. PERMA is the brain-child of:

• a. Thorndike
• b. Seligman
• c. Skinner
• d. Guthrie

4. In the original learned helplessness study:

• a. cats got out of puzzle boxes
• b. wolves roamed the forests
• c. dogs were yoked together
• d. birds were stuck together

5. Punishment impacts the:

• a. pleasure center of the brain
• b. conditioned stimulus
• c. individual’s schema
• d. whole operant

Why We Punish

• We punish
• Coaches yell and curse at players
• Teachers impose penalties for late assignments and late students
• Parents shun, yell, belittle, insult and physically assault their children
• Police officers make traffic stops, give tickets and arrest people
• Judges impose fines, assign to work details, incarcerate and sentence inmates to death.
• Suspected traitors, terrorists and spies are drugged, waterboarded and abused
• We expect punishment to occur
• norm of life
• not surprised to see a child being pulled by the arm
• offended but are not astonished to hear ethnic slurs
• pay late fees, parking fines or speeding tickets
• we expect life to include punishment
• Upset when criminals get off
• We feel like something should be done
• We want someone to be punished
• We celebrities, politicians and Wall Street to pay for their deed
• Put to death for heinous crimes

2. Assumptions about Punishment

Assume punishment is natural

• Part of our flight-or-flight systems
• When attacked, we want to counterattack
• When frustrated, we become aggressive
• When insulted, we want our critics to be punished
• All primates beat their chests
• We can overcome our initial wiring and reprogram ourselves to act more compassionately.

Assume punishment is right

• Retribution or retaliation for evil done
• Extreme version
• we all deserve to die
• horrible people, a fallen race or guilty

Assume punishment is right

• Compared to what we deserve
• punishment is easy
• Does a baby deserve punishment?

Assume it is moral

• Eye for an eye
• Cain killing Abel
•  argues death is too harsh
• God commutes sentence to banishment
• no is allowed to kill him
• mark of Cain

Assume it is fair

• Punishment must be proportional
• What is proportional response to a crying child?
• Is making them cry more actually the answer?

Assume good for you

• Rehabilitation and correction
• grow up to be a good person
• If you don’t punish children, they will never learn to behave properly
• No empirical evidence that punishment makes us good
• might be worth the risk to go against the evidence of emotional problems caused by punishment, if it work effectively.

Assume effective

• At extremes, highly effective
• if executed, zero percent chance will commit another crime
• Doesn’t teach the person anything
• To measure effectiveness, goal must be clear.
• Goal: change character
• Change heart or path in life
• punishment is not effective
• Doesn’t act a deterrent
• people aren’t thinking clearly
• Can temporarily suppress a behavior
• Must stay present all the time
• Has bad side effects
• Punishment is not a good long-term solution

3. Types of Punishment

Two Types of Punishment

Positive punishment

• lowers likelihood of a behavior reoccurring
• Give a yell, an insult, a slap, a spanking or an electric shock
• Positive doesn’t mean pleasant
• Something has been given or added

Negative punishment

• decreases the likelihood that a response will occur
• take something away
• examples include time out, grounding, taking away privileges and shunning

4. Effects of Punishment

• Broad impact
• Doesn’t change one behavior
• Impacts all behaviors being displayed
• Phone answering operant
• Not understand which behavior is being punished
• Dog cower
• Can’t be sure what you are mad about
• Undo existing rewards
• May unintentionally disrupt a positive behavior
• Limited
• Slow for police car
• Only works when the punisher is present
• Blocks behavior. It doesn’t eliminate it
• No long-term positive changes
• Stopping old behaviors is not the same as learning new ones
• Learning requires the acquisition of good behaviors
• Punishment isn’t learning
• Fear
• Not learn an association between the action and punishment
• Not want to be around the punisher
• Delivered in anger
• Jeopardizes the premise of fairness
• Not distribute justice evenly
• Not act rationally
• Models inappropriate behaviors
• Aggressive
• Use of power
• Teaches to be a punisher
• Teaches us to be manipulative
• Punishment is a power play
• Illegal residents
• avoid becoming involved in their community
• fear local police
• Punishing makes you scary
• No fun to be around
• Avoid the teacher
• Distance their parents
• Happens after the event stops
• Destroys son’s Lego masterpiece
• Deed is done
• Where does punishment fit here? What is the appropriate course?

5. Alternatives To Punishment

• Mediation
• Negotiation
• Bartering
• Punishment isn’t only option
• Reward could be given for creators
• Convert destroyer to a creator
• Wait
• Decisions don’t have to be made instantly
• Can take its time to figure out what to do.
• As a family
• Change viewpoint
• Crime that needs to be punished
• Accident that needs compassion
• Problem-solving opportunity

Reinforcement can mean adding steel to a wall or building. In learning, we usually think of it as increasing the likelihood of an operant (group of behaviors) occurring.

Some things don’t require reinforcement. We come into this life with many pre-wired routines. We have a place to start.

But most of the things we do have to be taught. And one of the best tools we have is positive reinforcement. It works on pets and animals. It works on our kids. It works on our parents. It works on us.

Here are 5 things we’ll cover;

• Definition
• Reinforcer Types
• Give & Take
• Reinforcement. Types
• Schedules of Reinforcement

 

Terms

• association
• avoidance learning
• behavior
• consequence
• continuous reinforcement
• deferential release
• environmental stimulus
• escape learning
• extinguish
• fixed interval (FI)
• fixed ratio (FR)
• generalized conditioned reinforcers
• impending doom
• intermittent schedules
• likelihood
• N minutes
• N times
• nagging
• negative
• negative reinforcement
• operant
• performance
• positive
• positive reinforcement
• practice
• praise & affection
• primary reinforcer
• prior experience
• reinforcement types
• reinforcer types
• resistance to extinction
• response
• rewards
• scalloped
• schedules of reinforcement
• secondary reinforcer
• shaping
• signal termination
• situation
• stimulus
• stimulus presentation
• successive approximations
• variable interval (VI)
• variable ratio (VR)

Quiz

None

Notes

1. Definition

• An environmental stimulus that occurs after the response and increases the likelihood that the response will occur in the future
• Increases likelihood of operant reappearing

2. Reinforcer Types

• • Primary Reinforcer
    • satisfies some biological need and works naturally, regardless of a person’s prior experience
  • Secondary Reinforcer
    • a stimulus that becomes reinforcing because of its association with a primary reinforcer
  • Generalized conditioned reinforcers
    • A type of secondary
    • Praise and affection

3. Give & Take

• 2 ways to apply
  • give +
  • take –

4. Reinforcement Types

• Positive Reinforcement
  • Process by which presentation of a stimulus after a response makes the response more likely to occur in the future
• Negative Reinforcement
  • Negative reinforcement involves a situation in which a response that terminates an aversive  stimulus will strengthen that response
  • Eating an aspirin will reduce the headache and strengthen the behavior of aspirin-eating (sometimes referred to as escape-learning)
  • Avoidance learning:  A response prevents a potentially aversive event from occurring
  • Child cleans his room to avoid parental nagging
  • Removing impending doom

5. Schedules of Reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement
  • Shaping
  • Reinforcer is obtained for every response
• Intermittent schedules: Reinforcer is not obtained for every response
• Fixed interval (FI) (scalloped)
  • After the elapse of N minutes
• Fixed ratio (FR)
  • Every Nth response
• Variable interval (VI) (resistant to extinction)
  • On average, after N minutes
• Variable ratio (VR) (very resistant to extinction)
  • The average is every Nth response
• Rewards should be given deferentially
  • Parents should reward behaviors they want and ignore (extinguish) behaviors they don’t want.
  • Behavior can be shaped by rewarding successive approximations
  • Practice without reinforcement doesn’t improve performance

Here are 5 things you need remember from this class session:

• novice
• expert
• mass
• distributed
• deliberate

If “practice makes perfect” why aren’t we perfect. It turns out that it is not as easy as the motto suggests. Although we don’t know how people become experts, we know what experts do. With a little mental gymnastics, we think we know how you can become an expert, and it does involve practice.

 

Terms

• absolute pitch
• age begin
• albino sniper
• algorithm
• amount of long term practice
• amount of knowledge
• amount of practice
• amount of practice over years
• amount of practice per day
• analogical reasoning
• availability of strategies
•  Baddely & Longman (1978) (typists)
• blocking, stage movements, cue-to-cue (Q2Q)
• breadth-first search
• Chase & Simon (1973) (chess)
• Chi (1977) (chess)
• chunking
• common mistakes
• context-dependent memory
• control strategy
• data structures
• delayed gratification
• deliberate practice
• demonstrable
• depth-first search
• distributed practice
• domain specificity
• domain-specific tasks
• dress rehearsal
• dry tech
• Ebbinghaus
• effort
• encoding specificity principle
• engagement
• entorhinal cortex
• Ericsson and Polson (JC, a waiter)
• Ericsson, K. Anders (deliberate practice)
• expanded rehearsal strategy
• expert
• feedback
• final review
• genetic factor
• genetics
• goal directed
• goals
• heuristic
• Hippocampus
• immediate feedback
• knowledge
• knowledge amount
• knowledge content
• knowledge structure
• Larkin, McDermott, Simon & Simon (1980) (Expert problem solving)
• limited sessions
• Loftus & Palmer (1974) (memory)
• massed practice
• maximal performance
• mental rehearsal
• mental representation
• Misinformation Effect
• monitoring
• motivation
• Noh theater (Japanese theater)
• number of chunks
• number of errors
• observable data
• organization
• pace
• part practice
• performance
• perirhinal cortex
• perseverance
• play
• post-encoding distortion
• post-encoding distortion sensitivity
• practice
• practice as maintenance
• predicting moves
• problem solving
• qualitative differences
• recall
• regular sessions
• rehearsal
• repetition
• representation of knowledge
• Rhinal cortices (surround hippocampus)
• rote learning
• run-throughs
• schema development
• segmentation
• sensitivity to context
• serial position effect
• size of chunks
• solution speed
• solution time
• solving problem backward
• solving problem forward
• source confusion
• spaced practice
• specialized knowledge
• state-dependent memory
• strategy
• strategy & knowledge
• subgoals
• syntax
• talent
• target directed
• tech rehearsal
• textbook physics problem
• Tulving & Thompson (1973) (encoding conditions)
• wedding rehearsal
• work
• working memory
• Ye & Salvendy (C programmers)

Quiz

1. To become an expert it is good to:

• a. spend 10 years learning
• b. practice every day
• c. start young
• d. all of the above

 

2. Experts have:

• a. less specific knowledge
• b. larger chunks
• c. more chunks
• d. all of the above

3. How much practice gives you the best results in the shortest amount of time:

• a. 1 session, 1 hour per day
• b. 2 sessions, 1 hour each
• c. 1 session, 3 hours per day
• d. 2 sessions, 2 hours each

4. Distributed practice is also called:

• a. thoughtful practice
• b. massed practice
• c. spaced practice
• d. solo practice

5. Which is great for immediate gains:

• a. deliberate practice
• b. massed practice
• c. spaced practice
• d. mental practice

1. To become an expert it is good to:

• a. spend 10 years learning
• b. practice every day
• c. start young
• d. all of the above

2. Experts have:

• a. less specific knowledge
• b. larger chunks
• c. more chunks
• d. all of the above

3. How much practice gives you the best results in the shortest amount of time:

• a. 1 session, 1 hour per day
• b. 2 sessions, 1 hour each
• c. 1 session, 3 hours per day
• d. 2 sessions, 2 hours each

4. Distributed practice is also called:

• a. thoughtful practice
• b. massed practice
• c. spaced practice
• d. solo practice

5. Which is great for immediate gains:

• a. deliberate practice
• b. massed practice
• c. spaced practice
• d. mental practice

 

 

Here are my notes on this topic:

• novice
• expert
• mass
• distributed
• deliberate

 

EXPERT

 

• Expertise research can only show how experts perform
• Doesn’t tell how become experts
• Maximal performance
  • future international-level performers are not randomly assigned to their training condition
  • cannot rule out the possibility that there is something different about those individuals who ultimately reach expert-level performance
• Talent
  • evidence for the talent position is relatively weak
  • individual difference ability characteristics influence skill acquisition
  • general intelligence is a good predictor of performance on novel tasks
  • at least in the initial phases of training
• Talent might be:
  • genetic factor
  • motivational factors may be genetically influenced
• Experts
  • Solve problems faster than novices
  • Have better memory for meaningful information
  • Mostly qualitative differences
• Expertise In General
  • Expertise is mainly the
    • organization &
    • representation of knowledge
  • Observable data
    • doing of something
  • Combines strategy & knowledge
  • Not as much about
    • amount of knowledge
    • availability of strategies
  • Try to organize facts into a mental representation
• Expert: How differ from novice?
• 20 characteristics…
• 1. More knowledge
  • Children are universal novices
  • Chase and Simon estimated expert chess players have a vocabulary of up to 50,000 patterns representing familiar configurations of chess pieces
• 2. More specialized knowledge
  • 10-year-old chess players
  • Can recall more chess pieces correctly than adults who used to play chess when they were younger
  • Can recall less digits than adults
  • Chi (1977)
    • Typically acquired through practice
    • Produces a measurable increase in performance
• 3. Chunk information differently
  • Chess
  • Chase & Simon (1973)
    • Expert Chess Players
    • Not better recall of random chess positions
    • Better recall of meaningful chess positions
    • Expert: How differ from novice?
  • Computer programmers
    • Ye & Salvendy (C programmers)
  • Knowledge is composed of
  • A. Knowledge structure
    • The way knowledge pieces are organized and interrelated
    • Examples: production rules, frames, scripts?
  • B. Knowledge content
    • What is encoded and understood
    • Computer programming examples
    • syntax
    • data structures
    • algorithms
  • C. Control strategy
    • How knowledge is accessed and used
    • Examples: top-down strategy, bottom-up strategy, opportunistic strategy
  • Experts
    • More knowledge
    • Fewer chunks
    • Larger chunks
• 4. Better schema development
  • Ericsson and Polson
  • JC (a waiter) could memorize up to 20 dinner orders at a time
  • Used mnemonic strategies to encode items from different categories
    • (e.g., meat temperature, salad dressing, etc.).
  • For each order, clustered items with previous items from the same category
  • If blue cheese dressing, JC would encode the initial letter of the salad dressing with the initial letters from previous orders
    •  (e.g., BOOT = blue cheese, oil-vinegar, oil-vinegar, thousand island)
  • Recalled all items of a category clockwise
• 5. More sensitive to context
  • Context
  • Encoding specificity principle
  • Tulving & Thompson (1973)
  • Remember better when encoding conditions match retrieval conditions
  • Context-dependent memory:  Easier to remember in the learning environment
  • State-dependent memory:  Easier to remember when internal states match
• 6. Less sensitive to post-encoding distortion
  • Post-Encoding Distortion
  • The Misinformation Effect
  • Loftus & Palmer (1974)
    • Distortion of a memory by misleading post-event information
    • Subjects watched film
    • Week later
    • Read summary of film
    • 1 group gets summaries with misleading info
    • Told there was a Yield sign
    • Asked detailed questions
    • Distortion
    • Results: Didn’t recall the Stop sign
  • Source Confusion
    • Tendency to recall or recognize something as familiar but to forget where we encountered it
• 7. Strategy
  • A. Algorithm
    • Depth-first search
    • Follow each branch of the tree to the end
    • If no solution, go back up and start again
    • Breadth-first search
    • How differ from novice?
    • Search tree all the way across each level
    • If no solution, try the next level
    • Systematically tries every possibility
    • If there is a solution to the problem, an algorithm, by definition, will find it
    • Slow
  • B. Heuristic
    • Rules of thumb
    • Fast
    • Can miss a solution
    • Textbook physics problem
    • A bullet leaves the muzzle of a gun at a speed of 400m/sec. The length of the gun barrel is 0.5m. Assuming that the bullet is uniformly accelerated, what is the average speed within the barrel?
    • Larkin, McDermott, Simon & Simon (1980)
    • Experts solved problem in 1/4th the time
    • Experts had fewer errors
    • Experts solved the problem forwards
    • Novices solved it backwards
    • Experts only work forwards with problems which they judge from experience to be simple.
    • Novices generally seem to need subgoals
    • Management of goals and sub-goals may be time-consuming
    • Working backwards may be useful for solving new problems
    • Working forward allows us to classify problems, so we can solve them more efficiently when we encounter them again
  • C. Analogical reasoning
    • Expert children use semantic and analogical comparisons significantly more frequently than novice children of the same age
• 8. Strategy & Knowledge
  • 4-to-7-year-old dinosaur experts
  • Can generate complex hierarchical inferences involving categorization and attribution
  • Can infer that an unfamiliar dinosaur might be “pretty dangerous ‘cause he’s a meat eater”
  • differ from novice?
  • Categorizing as a “meat eater” from the dinosaur’s sharp teeth
  • inferring from categorical knowledge that this meat eater might be “pretty dangerous”
  • Can generate simple linear  inferences on the basis of specific features
  • differ from novice?
  • The dinosaur “Could walk real fast ‘cause he has giant legs”
  • Implies that “walking fast” is a property of “giant legs”
• 9. More Practice
  • Expertise is often attributed to talent
  • More practice
  • Gardner (multiple intelligence) says born with tend processing certain types of information—musical, spatial, interpersonal, etc.
  • But skills of prodigies and savants seem to be acquired
  •  “Talents” can be taught
  • Absolute pitch can be acquired by most people
  • assuming music instruction begins at a sufficiently young age
  • A. Practice more per day
    • 1 hour per day
    • Biggest bang for the practice buck
    • 2 hours/day                                       Reduced benefit
    • 4 hours/day                                       No benefit found
  • B. Practice more for the long term
    • Massed practice = good for short term
    • Distributed practice = better for long term
  • C. Practice more years
    • Most domains require at least 10 years to attain expert levels of performance
    • 10,000 hrs
    • Expert at something
    • Demonstrable
    • Not self-declared
• 10. Actually Do Something
• 11. Experts Are Physically Able
  • Tall enough to play basketball
  • Small enough to be a jockey
  • Shaped like a model
  • High fashion
  • Swimsuit
  • See well enough for task
  • Albino sniper
• 12. Expert has some talent
  • Genetic factor?
  • Not found any
  • Motivation
  • As genetic factor?
• 13. Experts Start Early
  • Starting age is important in determining the level of skill one will attain
  • age 5 and 30 hours per week will always perform
  • age 10 and 30 hours per week
• 14. Expert is domain specific
  • General reaction times not better
• 15. Experts Persevere
  • Don’t stop
  • persevere determines your limits.
  • marathon, not a sprint.
• 16. Delay Gratification
  • Practice with an audience
• 17. Experts Work At It
  • Requires effort
• 18. Look For Feedback
  • Seek it out
  • Use it
• 19. Experts Last Longer
  • Maintain high levels of performance
  • after less accomplished performers begin to decline
  • Advantage is restricted to domain-specific tasks
  • physiological adaptations require sustained practice to maintain
  • mechanisms that govern expert performance may be easier to maintain than to acquire
• 20. Deliberate Practice
  • 3 types of domain-relevant experience:
  • Work
  • Play
  • Deliberate Practice
    • optimal opportunities for performance improvement through feedback
• Common Mistakes
  • Not enough
  • Lack of clear and appropriate goals
  • Underestimate variability of performance
  • Overestimate transfer of learning
  • Practice for immediate improvement rather than long-term

PRACTICE

• 3 TYPES OF PRACTICE
  • Mass
  • Distributed
  • Deliberate
• Practice as maintenance
  • Out of practice
  • Motor skills
• Massed Practice
  • Effective for short term
  • large amount of material
  • over a short period of time
  • with only short intervals in between
  • Rest periods are shorter in duration than practice times
  • Driving range
  • Cramming night before test
  • Ted Williams
• Distributed Practice
  • (Spaced practice)
  • short sessions over longer time
  • Ebbinghaus
    • spacing effect = learn better is spread over time
    • serial position effect
  •  Baddely & Longman (1978)
    • postmen how to type
    • massed practice
    • learn material in fewer days
    • most preferred
  • Shorter sessions over multiple days
    • learned better
    • less total hours
  • Spacing Effect and Advertising
    • not effective to present same commercial back-to-back (massed repetition)
    • different versions of the same ad
  • Where processed?
    • Hippocampus
    • Rhinal cortices (surround hippocampus)
      • mostly here
  • Rely on working memory
    • not ability to form long term memories
  • Rhinal Cortex
    • Perirhinal cortex
    • Entorhinal cortex
  • If remove hippocampus
    • but Rhinal cortices are un-damaged
    • some distributed practice ability
• Deliberate Practice
  • K. Anders Ericsson
  • Experts
    • 3 types of experience
    • work, play and deliberate practice
  • Essential Components
    • to  improves accuracy and speed of performance
  • 1. Motivation
    • attend to task
    • effort to improve
    • practice isn’t fun
  • 2. Use pre-existing knowledge
    • Understand task quickly
    • Studying games played by chess masters
    • Predicting moves
  • 3. Immediate feedback
    • Informative
    • Willing to act on it
  • 4. Do task repeatedly
  • 5. Be engaged
    • Difficult to measure
    • A. diary
      • reactive effects are an issue
      • act different than usual
    • B. estimate amount of time engaged in deliberate practice since taking up the activity
      • long-term retrospective estimates
      • validity?
    • Retrospective accounts are similar
      • experts and novices
      • Got better every year
      • even if didn’t
  • 6. Monitoring
    • Detailed & Consistent
  • 7. Goal directed
    • Solve a problem
    • Counter a deficiency
    • Mimic target context as closely as possible
    • not maximize immediate performance
    • moon walk like Michael Jackson
  • 8. Target directed
    • Use of variety of appropriate target behaviors
    • Component actions needed to perform target skills
  • 9. Regular Sessions
    • Must maintain full attention
    • 1 hr per day                        biggest bang
    • 2 hr per day                        diminished returns
    • >4 hr per day                     can’t prove helps
  • 10. Limited Sessions
    • Can vary length
    • Don’t overdue
    • tennis elbow
    • writer’s cramp
    • guitarist’s cramp
  • 11. Massed & Distributed Practice
    • Within session
    • Essential Components
  • 12. Part practice
    • Segmentation
    • Only if parts don’t overlap
    • Essential Components
  • 13. Pace: Don’t Slow Down
    • Hard to speed up
  • EXAMPLE….
  • Novice Pianist
    • Always starts playing piece at the beginning.
    • After making a mistake, stops, re-plays that particular spot with correct notes, and continues from there.
    • Repeats over and over until target time of practice session is reached.
  • Concert Pianist
    • Decides to use conceptual memory to perform piece (for a recording).
    • Analyzes the form of the piece for structural, conceptual cues.
    • Designed practice sessions around particular goals: fingering, phrasing, pedal, technical difficulties, emotional cues – about 12 different dimensions in all.

Rehearsal vs Practice

• Practice = aim for perfection
  • get it right
  • alone or with others
  • try to improve
  • work alone
  • work on specific areas
  • scheduled session
  • practice rooms
• Rehearsal
  • Rehearsal = before public performance
    • coordinate with others
    • ready for the performance
    • in place where will perform
    • coordinated mind
    • rehearsal hall
    • final review
    • ensemble activities
    • orchestra doesn’t practice together, it rehearses
    • rehearsal focus on one type of material
    • leader or leaderless
  • Wedding rehearsal
  • Dress rehearsal = perform with every detail present, costumes, lighting, etc.
  • Run-throughs
    • blocking, stage movements, cue-to-cue (Q2Q)
  • Tech rehearsal
    • dry tech (no performers present, turn lights on and off)
  •  Noh theater (Japanese theater), practice separately, come together once: ichi-go ichi-e (one chance, one meeting)
  • practice = what you do when no one is looking
  • rehearsal = put everything together
  • Practice
    • stretching yourself
    • practice to where you’d feel uncomfortable doing it in front of others.
    • Practice is like the gym
  • Rehearsal at the Olympics
    • Collaboration
    • Shakedown cruise
    • Group focus
  • Mental Rehearsal
    • Physical rehearsal is better than mental
    • mental rehearsal is better than none
    • Expanded Rehearsal Strategy

Repetition

• rote learning = memorization by repetition
• recall quickly
• lines in play
• phone number
• times tables
• foundational knowledge
• phonics
• periodic table
• anatomy
• law statutes
• formulas