Less Pain for Learning Gain: Research Offers a Strategy to Increase Learning
With Less Effort
ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2010) — Scientists long have recognized that many
perceptual skills important for language comprehension and reading can be
enhanced through practice. Now research from Northwestern University suggests
a new way of training that could reduce by at least half the effort
previously thought necessary to make learning gains.
The research also may be the first behavioral demonstration of metaplasticity
-- the idea that experiences that on their own do not generate learning can
influence how effective later experiences are at generating learning.
"Prior to our work much of the research into perceptual learning could be
summed up as 'no pain, no gain,'" says Beverly Wright, first author of a
study in the Sept. 22 Journal of Neuroscience and communication sciences and
disorders professor at Northwestern. "Our work suggests that you can have the
same gain in learning with substantially less pain."
The findings could lead to less effortful therapies for children who suffer
from language learning impairments involving perceptual skills. And they hold
potential for members of the general population with an interest in enhancing
perceptual abilities -- for musicians seeking to sharpen their sensitivity to
sound, people studying a second language or physicians learning to tell the
difference between regular and irregular heartbeats.
Previous research showed that individuals become better at many perceptual
tasks by performing them again and again, typically making the training
tedious and long in length. It also showed that mere exposure to the
perceptual stimuli used during practice on these tasks does not generate
learning.
But the Northwestern researchers found that robust learning occurred when
they combined periods of practice that alone were too brief to cause learning
with periods of mere exposure to perceptual stimuli. "To our surprise, we
found that two 'wrongs' actually can make a right when it comes to perceptual
learning," says Wright.
What's more, they found that the combination led to perceptual learning gains
that were equal to the learning gains made by participants who performed
twice as much continuous task training (training which by nature of its
repetition and length often is onerous).
"It's as though once you get your system revved up by practicing a particular
skill, the brain acts as though you are still engaged in the task when you
are not and learning still takes place," says Wright, who teaches in
Northwestern's School of Communication.
Wright and Northwestern researchers Andrew Sabin, Yuxuan Zhang, Nicole
Marrone and Matthew Fitzgerald worked with four groups of adult participants
aged 18 to 30 years with normal hearing and no previous experience with
psychoacoustic tasks. Their goal was to improve participants' ability to
discriminate between the pitches of different tones.
The researchers initially determined the smallest difference in pitch that
participants could discriminate from a 1,000 Hertz standard tone. They then
divided the participants into four groups, each of which went through a
different training regimen.
Participants in one group were trained for 20 minutes per day for a week on
the pitch-discrimination task. Over and over again, they were asked to tell
the difference between the 1,000 Hertz tone and a lower tone but showed no
improvement.
Of greatest importance for the study, participants in a second group showed
significant learning gains when the same amount of target task training (20
minutes) was combined with 20 minutes of work on an unrelated puzzle while
repeatedly presenting a 1,000 Hertz tone through headphones.
Impressively, the learning of the second group also was comparable to that of
a third group that for a week practiced the pitch-discrimination target task
for 40 minutes per day.
A fourth group of participants repeatedly exposed to a 1,000 Hertz tone for
40 minutes per day while performing an unrelated task showed no learning
gains.
Further experiments revealed that the order of presentation -- whether the 20
minutes of target task training occurred before or after the 20 minutes of
the related task -- did not affect learning. Each scenario yielded equal
pitch discrimination learning gains.
In addition, the researchers discovered that the effectiveness of the
combination of the target task training and of the unrelated training plus
stimuli presentation began declining if the two tasks were separated by more
than 15 minutes. Pitch discrimination learning -- or evidence of
metaplasticity -- disappeared completely if the sessions were separated by
four hours.
The research is supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other
Communication Disorders-National Institutes of Health.
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網址：
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100922171604.htm
論文：
http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0487-10.2010
大意是學習時，一直反覆的學習，例如重復的刺激可能不是最有效的辦法，
這篇文章指出，當受試者在接受聽音訓練，辨認1000Hz音頻的音時，
每天聽刺激兩小時再加上兩小時邊做智力遊戲邊聽刺激的效果會最好，
會比1)每天聽兩小時刺激;2)每天聽四小時刺激;3)每天邊做智力遊戲邊聽四小時刺激
都要來的好。另外，不論是玩智力遊戲在前或後都會有這效果，
但兩者間隔不能超過15分鐘。
我還蠻好奇這個實驗背後原理是啥，
感覺有點奇怪。0rz
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