BUILDING MEMORIES I: ATTENTION AND REHEARSAL Themes –Learning across multiple “episodes” –Factors that influence encoding Presented information What you do with it What you know about it The context of the encoding episode –In general, memory will be influenced by The quantity of practice The distribution of practice The quality of practice –Informal strategies for learning What do you do?

ATTENTION AND LEARNING The unimportance of being earnest (Hyde & Jenkins, 1969) 24 words presented instructions about recall Encoding task:incidentalintentional rate pleasantness detect # of e’s

The importance of being awake Simons & Emmons (1956) –Word lists presented during sleep –EEG recorded to confirm sleep –Next day: recognition d’ = 0 Tilley (1979) –20 pictures of concrete objects shown before sleep –Ten repetitions of object names at different sleep stages –Next day: better recall, recognition of named objects –But only for “shallow” stages of sleep

The importance of paying attention –The classic “shadowing’ studies (e.g., Moray 1959: 35 reps don’t help) –Dual-task studies and divided attention (Murdock, 1965) –Are some attributes of events encoded “automatically”? Frequency Recency Temporal & spatial distribution –(Hasher & Zacks, 1979) Evidence that even these can be influenced by attention, age, etc.

AMOUNT OF PRACTICE Retention increases monotonically with amount of practice –Repetitions across lists (Ebbinghaus, 1885) –Repetitions within list (Rundus, 1971) The Power Law of Practice log(Y) = a * (log [practice]) + b taking the “antilog” of each side: Y = b * (practice) a –Ubiquitous in declarative and procedural learning –A number of models can generate it –E.g., Estes’ classic Stimulus Sampling Theory (1960’s)

THE POWER LAW OF PRACTICE Speed and accuracy improve, but at an ever-slower rate Task: reading inverted text (Kolers, 1975) Time = 10 x practice a-b

DISTRIBUTION OF PRACTICE: THE SPACING EFFECT The total-time hypothesis (Bugelski 1962) 8 CVC-CVC sec/pair total trials total time Spacing across days –Spanish vocabulary (Bahrick & Phelps (1987) Two sessions 0, 1 or 30 days between sessions Immediate test: no diffs 8 years later: 30-day is 2.5 times better –Typing Skill (Baddeley & Longman, 1978) One- or two-hour blocks One or two blocks per day Spaced practice group learns twice as fast

Spacing within sessions –The “lag” effect (e.g., Melton 1962) e.g. Underwood (1970): 42 nouns for free recall, one/sec rate 1 to 4 presentations, massed or spaced massed 15% 17% 17%19% spaced 16% 31% 42% 47% Limits to Spacing Advantage –Immediate tests after study –“data-driven” encoding and memory tasks –Very-long lag between presentations The wonders of “expanded rehearsal”

EXPLANATIONS OF THE SPACING EFFECT Encoding variability and relational processing –Idea: increasing retrieval paths –Spacing helps free recall > cued recall –Forcing variability sometimes helps, sometimes hurts, final recall Deficient attention (and its consequences) –Idea: massed presentations give habituation, less attention and learning e.g., Johnson & Uhle (1976): repeat Underwood (1970), measure “tone probe” secondary task RT: spaced massed

Deficient Rehearsal –Idea: less “covert” rehearsal if massed –Spacing does increase overt rehearsal –Spacing advantage even in incidental- memory tasks Consolidation –Idea: massed practice prevents full consolidation –Can it handle wide “scale” of spacing effects? Retrieval practice –Idea: spaced study gives “covert retrieval” of prior encounter –Forcing retrieval (test/study) gives better memory than study only (Carrier & Pashler, 1992)

Random Practice and “Procedural Reinstatement” The importance of “procedural reinstatement” in long-term retention (Healy) –Relation to ideas about encoding specificity (Tulving), learning as transition from declarative to procedural representation (Anderson) –Procedures as algorithms –When procedures are reinstated, learning is maintained Fenrich et al. ’95: Ss read 4-digit sequences Enter on one of two keypads Recognition of sequences better if same keypad used for test

The contextual interference effect –Battig (1966): high interference during learning gives better final retention –Schmidt & Bjork (92): “random” scheduling of skill components gives worse acquisition, but much better long- term retention –Analogy to spacing effect and immediate versus delayed tests – Healy & Sinclair: provides better “retrieval practice” of procedures Retrieval practice or relational encoding? –Lincoln (2001): practice on novel arithmetic symbols and rules Blocked Random Blocked-with-intervening-task

–Strong contextual interference effect –Blocked-IT equivalent to Blocked So not a good test of retrieval practice –Small advantage for relational comparison (exp. 2 vs. exp 1)) –Contextual interference effect a – function of the number of rules per block (exp. 3) –Overall, suggests strong role of retrieval practice, but procedures can be maintained during irrelevant WM

Materials used by Lincoln (2001) Figure 1. Kanji characters and associated rules used in Exp 1. The characters have no structural similarity, and the mapping of characters to rules is arbitrary. Figure 2. Kanji characters and associated rules used in Exps 2 and 3. Each pair of characters shares a feature, which is linked to the similarity of the rules for that pair.

Lincoln (2001): contextual interference And long-term retention, unrelated rules

Lincoln (2001): relational cues During acquisition

Lincoln (2001): effects of number of Rules per training block