Scientists have found a way to help learn skills faster
sciencealert.com
sciencealert.com
> “If you make the altered task too different, people do not get the gain we observed during reconsolidation. The modification between sessions needs to be subtle”
A better baseball analogy might be practicing catching line drives then practicing catching popups then practicing catching one-bounce throws then practicing catching a lobbed egg.
Or maybe practicing batting and then practicing golfing and then practicing kendo swings.
"Participants were unaware of this manipulation"
"We chose to manipulate sensorimotor variability so that participants were unaware of the fact that there was any change in the task"
[1] http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc...
So not only are the tasks similar, but they're so similar that participants weren't consciously aware that they were doing something different. Wacky
They also mention that "participants strengthened skill through the re-exploration of sensorimotor space."
I wonder how large an exploration of the sensorimotor space could be while generalizing/improving the original skill. (re batting and kendo). No idea, but interesting article either way
There also might be a delta (variation of the activity) that optimizes the learning progress. My guess for that would be...change too little and you're inefficient, change too much and you are inefficient, too.
In the article they say that "Contextual variability can strengthen retention [15] and generalization of skills", but that they "chose to increase sensorimotor variability while maintaining constant the original learning context."
They also mention that "attributing errors to internal sources can strengthen learning [19, 20] and generalization [21] of motor behavior"
My guess for an autodidact would be how powerful internal attribution is compared to the change in context and exploration of the sensorimotor space. Of course, they're probably not discrete, and probably also impact one another.
Sounds like some really interesting possible implications, and possibilities for further research. Really makes me want to reread the article and go through some of the articles they cite
> practicing batting and then practicing golfing and then practicing kendo swings
Actually, as the subject progresses toward being an "expert" their practice should be increasingly specific. Beginners will certainly benefit from the approach you mention initially, but professionals will not.
Regular successful achievement of a physical task (reliably hitting a ball with a bat) can be considered a walk through a problem space. Initially, any training that approximates the task will take you closer to the target in the space. However as you approach that target, the margin for error diminishes sharply. Consequently your training should become more specific.
Take a bucket of balls and just run through them quick.
This seems to align with the study. Same basic task, lots of minor, well in our case occasionally major too, variations. The kids would improve notably and significantly in a single session.
I saw that quote but I have no idea what the researcher is basing it on. As described, the study can only show that blocking/interleaving is superior to massed practice:
> The volunteers were split into three groups, and each spent 45 minutes practising this. Six hours later, one of the groups was asked to repeat the same training exercise again, while another group performed a slightly different version that required different squeezing force to move the cursor. The third group only completed the first training session, so they could act as a control.
That is, as described, there is no 'interleaved subtle-difference' vs 'interleaved gross-difference' comparison, because they only compared 'near-zero-practice' vs 'massed-practice' vs 'interleaved-practice'. They seem to be wildly extrapolating from there, in ignorance of a good deal of prior work.
Every time you reinforce your memory, the amount of time it takes to forget it lengthens. Or, more properly, the slope of the curve that describes the probability of forgetting it decreases. That curve is known as the "forgetting curve". In spaced repetition, you are trying to time the repetition so that you still have a low percentage chance of forgetting.
"Spaced learning" or "spacing" is almost the opposite effect. What it says is that inserting a space in learning such that you forget something makes the material stronger when you subsequently relearn it. Although I am not aware of research that actually links spacing to the forgetting curve, you can probably imagine that if you learn something once, the forgetting curve is fairly steep (i.e., the probability of you forgetting it grows fairly quickly with time). With spacing, if you wait until you forget something and then relearn it, the forgetting curve is much shallower the second time (i.e. the probability of you forgetting it grows fairly slowly with time). In fact, it is apparently much shallower than if you had done spaced repetition (i.e. timed a reinforcement so that that allowed you to remember the item rather than forgetting it). Forgetting an relearning is rather an annoying and difficult way of learning, but some research suggest that it is dramatically more effective. This has been called "desired difficulty".
Also, there is a slightly nuanced difference between "blocking" and "interleaving". In interleaving, you fairly rapidly change topics and then loop back to the first again. So, if you have to learn 5 tasks, (A, B, C, D and E) you could spend 10 minutes on each and then loop back to the beginning. If you did that 6 times, you would have spent 1 hour on each task. Blocking would be spending 1 hour on each task, in blocks and then going back to it the next day. These are both different from the approach of training A until you learned it, then moving on to B, etc, etc.
In schools you can talk about "blocked" schedules (i.e. you try to fit in every subject every day -- not to be confused with the opposite of cramming a single subject into 3 or 4 periods, annoyingly also called a "blocked schedule"). Inside each subject they often don't interleave the material, though. There are some textbooks available that try to interleave the material within a subject. I have also read papers of some experiments where they actually tried to interleave all of the subjects (i.e., in each period you would have 10 minutes of each subject) with some success.
Anyway, I hope that helps. I spent a huge amount of time reading about this a few years ago, but have neglected it for about 3 years, so I hope I have not made any mistakes myself ;-)
12 page pdf: http://www.cell.com/cms/attachment/2045379445/2056784269/mmc...
Unconscious Incompetence: You don't know that you don't know. (I don't know how to drive a manual)
Conscious Incompetence: You know that you don't know, and start learning the skill. (I'm learning how to drive a manual)
Conscious Competence: Your skills have improved and you understand them, but there's a lot of manual work involved. (To drive a manual, you do step X, Y, and Z)
Unconscious Competence: The skill has been internalized and is automatic. (I know how to drive a manual without thinking about it)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence
For example, let's say you were learning guitar, a good exercise would be to look at a random note on the fretboard (for example, the 10th fret on the G string in standard tuning) and sing the note, then play the note and see how close you were. When you can do that reliably, that's a big step forward towards mastery IMO.
However, I would recommend starting with ear training for relative pitch rather than absolute pitch (which is what the exercise above is for). For that, you play a note, then sing a note a certain interval away from it (e.g. a minor third) then play the note which is a minor third away from the first note. I believe this is a great exercise to start with.
- Starting from different points in the piece also provides a good subtle variation.
- Playing the piece at different octaves.
Huh? It's not about changing the instrument. They mean stuff like practicing in different tempos, the same pattern in different scales, playing a piece with different accompaniment styles, playing the piece with open vs barre chords, or with a different strumming pattern, etc.
1) Practicing right hand alone slowly 2) RH staccato (short punchy notes) 3) RH long-short long-short (so it "swings" kinda like jazz) 4) RH short-long short-long 5) RH short-short-short-long, and all other combinations 6) Same techniques as above, but with the LH, applied to a triple rather than a quad 7) Practicing both hands together, with RH steady but LH a syncopated "wrong" rhythm 8) Both hands together, LH steady but RH a syncopated "wrong" rhythm 9) Gradually speeding up the metronome until 7) and 8) "met in the middle" and it started sounding smooth
Later when I learned Beethoven's Appossionata (first movement), there's this section in left hand that is hard and fast, five notes per beat. Really hard if you're not left-handed. My teacher had me learn it by learning the mirror-image inverse in the right hand at the same time - so for instance if you'd play a C# in the left, you'd play an Eb (an octave up) in the right. It sounded like crap, but the end result was like it was my right hand "teaching" my left hand and I was eventually able to nail it.
The slash looks goofy.
http://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-year-is-sing...
(Australian English speaker here.)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2593268/The-d...
- Donepezil is used to improve memory function in Alzheimer’s patients
- Children learn skills quickly as their brains go through 'critical periods’
- Researchers found donepezil can revert adult brains to these periods
- It increases the 'elasticity' of the brain making it capable of learning rapidly
- Researchers rewired a visually impaired patient’s brain to process images
- The drug works by boosting chemicals in the brain that reduce with ageGiven the study I assume a different mechanism coming in to play also:
If you try to play a musical piece on an instrument teachers will advise you to practice as slow as needed, not to make a single mistake, that could end up being learned.
It's like trying to correct yourself on word you mangled up while speaking, you'll be so fixated you immediately make the mistake again and again.
This memory effect might have been countered by the variations in the study.
(I posted the same thing elsewhere, but as a comment of the furthest down top-level comment I doubt it will be seen there)
Instead of learning to correct toward a given nominal, we get a sense of what nominal is, given an input, essentially.
Given the study I assume a different mechanism coming in to play also:
If you try to play a musical piece on an instrument teachers will advise you to practice as slow as needed, not to make a single mistake, that could end up being learned.
It's like trying to correct yourself on word you mangled up while speaking, you'll be so fixated you immediately make the mistake again and again.
This memory effect might have been countered by the variations in the study.
I struggled with exactly that, and failed on that instrument. Never did quite get the same thing out of it twice, without a lot of focus on that thing.
Later, with little formal practice, I would play with a different one. Ended up with some modest skill that remains today.
edit: Sleep is an extremely important component of this. You must be well rested, and preferably do not ingest significant amounts of alcohol before sleeping as that will mess up short term to long term memory mapping from hippo to pfc.
It almost felt like the gains from practising got stored up somewhere while I was awake, and slowly unspooled while I was sleeping.
To learn any piece by heart, never start at the same measure, play voices separately, combine different voices, sing together with it, play it backwards (measure n then measure n-1 + measure n, then measure n-2 + measure n-1 + measure n...), you can do this with bigger sections as well, change tempo, etc. I still remember how to play my 4-voice Bach fugue even though I've stopped playing the piano for years now. I tried this with text and public speaking too and it works.
I thought this was widely known...?
However, quite a few of my peers thought it was "stupid" and just practiced the same piece over and over, at the same tempo, without ever stopping and working on the hard parts.
After several years of music, there was a pronounced difference between those who practiced effectively and those who merely repeated their mistakes.
Perhaps a study like this could convince future students that it's worthwhile.