Learning Of New Material Research Articles

Additional boundary condition for list-method directed forgetting: The effect of presentation format.

The attempt to forget some recently encoded information renders this information difficult to recall in a subsequent memory test. "Forget" instructions are only effective when followed by learning of new material. In the present study, we asked whether the new material needs to match the format of the to-be-forgotten information for forgetting effects to emerge. Participants studied visually presented words or line drawings (L1) and afterward were instructed to remember or forget these items. Then a 2nd conceptually unrelated list (L2) was presented that either matched or mismatched the format of L1. Forgetting effects were observed only when the lists matched in format but not when the formats mismatched. This result establishes an important boundary condition of directed forgetting and suggests that when salient retrieval cues guide retrieval, they eliminate the effect of the "forget" cue. Implications for theories of directed forgetting are discussed.

E-learning and Sustainability in Higher Education

The aim of this paper is to examine and investigate the challenges that higher education face to become more sustainable in their teaching and learning especially in Australia and Portugal. E-learning challenges have numerous concepts: i.e. 1) training and developing new e-learning skills for lecturers, and 2) enhancing pedagogic approaches to match the e-learning models. All these challenges have the role in supporting teaching and learning in the higher education and have ‘implications for sustainability’ (Attwell, 2004, p.7). These challenges will require time and enthusiasm to work with a ‘new collaborative model to devise and implement strategy, as well as for e-learning development at practice level, is a particularly challenging target in institutions with long-standing traditions of hierarchy’ (Gunn 2010, p.100 -101). A number of successful approaches were identified and implemented by talented lecturers looking for clarification to real educational problems. However, some of these approaches were recognized in their universities, as teaching and learning grants were awarded to enhance the adoption of these approaches in the future. These approaches were: firstly, discussion group forums using the FLECS facility - i.e. Blackboard at Curtin University, while Moodle Forums at Universidade Aberta (Portuguese Open University), to develop individual student learning and to reduce the raw materials between lecturers and students. The forum approach encourages collaboration and teamwork, creates connections and links with other students, enables the sharing of information, and enhances communication and interaction between the students. These benefits were imperative to develop students’ communications skills and learning of new materials, which will assist them to develop their skills as individuals, and be successful and confident in real life situations in the future. Secondly, students’ assessments were uploaded to the FLECS facility for marking. Lecturers used two methods for marking: 1) adding their comments to the softcopy version and uploaded it once again to the FLECS facility, 2) using software i.e. ‘Audacity’ and ‘echo360’ to communicate with students by providing them with feedback on their assessments and uploaded these MP3 files to the FLECS facility. Furthermore, lecturers provided general assessment feedback for the benefit of the whole class, directed to all campuses, and weekly lecture summaries. This paper provides experimental evidence based on quantitative and qualitative data derived from informal and formal student’s feedback from 77 student evaluations and perspectives toward the IS6 and AP units (respectively in Curtin University and in Universidade Aberta). The findings indicated that win-win strategy was executed since lecturers were delighted that e-learning sustainability principles were flourishing in their teaching and learning approaches, since all communication between students were established via email or Blackboard at Curtin University and Moodle forums at Universidade Aberta.

The interim test effect: Testing prior material can facilitate the learning of new material

A wealth of prior research has shown that testing can improve subsequent learning of the initially tested material. In contrast, only one recent study has shown that an interim test over prior material can improve learning of subsequent new material (i.e., an interim-test effect). Five experiments replicated and extended this initial work by exploring the extent to which interim test effects generalize to complex text material. Participants were prompted to recall each section of an expository text before moving on to study the next section, or were only prompted to recall after the final section. In all experiments, recall of the final, target section was greater when prior sections had received interim tests versus no interim tests. Experiment 3 established that the effect was due to interim testing in particular rather than to intervening activity in general. Experiment 4 established that the effect was not due to test expectancy differences. In contrast to prior research, Experiment 4 also provided evidence that the effect is not due to release from proactive interference. We discuss other possible mechanisms underlying interim-test effects with text, including shifting to more effective encoding strategies.

Portable Learning for the 21st Century Law School: Designing a New Pedagogy for the Modern Global Context

In the 20th Century, stationary fixed-location learning was the centerpiece of traditional legal education. The learning of new material occurred in a classroom, stretched in a linear fashion to a library for review and continuation, and returned to the classroom to repeat the cycle. This type of learning was replicated on a regular basis, culminating in a single summative examination of performance. In the 21st Century, however, law students and law practice have changed dramatically. With globalization and advanced technology creating a wide array of new demands, learning has become portable, with Web-based distance learning and educational platforms, pod casts, blogs and interactive, wiki-based outlining. A reconception of legal education incorporating portability has created significant opportunity for refinement and modification of the traditional stationary construction of legal education. It also has yielded many implications, such as what learning should occur in fixed-space classrooms and what should become portable.

The crucial role of postcue encoding in directed forgetting and context-dependent forgetting.

People can intentionally forget previously studied material if, after study, a forget cue is provided and new material is learned. It has recently been suggested that such list-method directed forgetting arises because the forget cue induces a change in internal context and causes context-dependent forgetting of the studied material (L. Sahakyan & C. M. Kelley, 2002). The authors compared directed forgetting and context-dependent forgetting by examining whether, like a forget cue, a change in internal context needs subsequent learning of new material to be effective. Participants studied an item list and, after study, received a remember cue or a forget cue or their internal context was changed through an imagination task. In each condition, half the participants learned a second list, and the other half fulfilled an unrelated distractor task. Both the forget cue and the change in internal context induced forgetting of the first list only when learning of the second list was interpolated. These results suggest that postcue encoding of new material is crucial for both directed forgetting and (some forms of) context-dependent forgetting.

Cognitive Optimism: Self-Deception or Memory-Based Processing Heuristics?

In a wide variety of cognitive tasks, people's expectations of what their own performance is, was, and will be are an overestimate of reality. After documenting a number of situations in which people exhibit such overconfidence, several reasons for it are discussed. It is suggested that in these situations, the optimistic bias is not attributable exclusively to self-deception or wishful thinking. Rather, the information yielded up by the cognitive system, in combination with the heuristics used for making judgments of future and past performance tailored to the specific questions asked of participants, produces a bias toward believing that one knows, knew, and will perform better than actual performance substantiates. Consequently, in the cognitive domain, the inflated beliefs that result in overconfidence also result in cessation of efforts before the correct solution of problems is ascertained, before accurate retrieval of memorial information is attained, or before adequate learning of new material has been accomplished. This effect seems in contrast to findings on people's moods and self-esteem in real-world or threatening situations that suggest that an optimistic bias in these domains be person protective and adaptive.

TEACHING CALCULUS STUDENTS HOW TO STUDY

ABSTRACT The authors address the problem of poor study habits of calculus students and present techniques to teach students to study consistently and effectively. The approach explicitly shows students how to spend their time studying at least an hour a day, six days a week. It also helps them improve both their learning of new material and retention of earlier concepts in a highly organized fashion. Many students greatly appreciate the added structure, work harder than in previous courses, and witness newfound success as a consequence.

Neurological changes with clozapine treatment

It has been established that clozapine is more effective in decreasing both the negative and positive symptoms of schizophrenia than standard antipsychotics. In addition to having positive and negative symptoms, however, persons with schizophrenia have multiple deficits on neuropsychological exams. Some of these deficits have been shown to be mediated by functioning in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and have been found to be correlated with prominent symptoms of schizophrenia such as conceptual disorganization and the deficit syndrome. These prefrontal deficits seriously impair the learning of new material, ability to problem-solve, and attentional functioning. Whether clozapine ameliorates these underlying deficits is not known as the literature in this area presents a mixed picture. The current study tested the hypothesis that some neuropsychological measures known to be impaired in schizophrenic patients both on and off standard medication would improve with clozapine treatment. The Neurological Exam Scale (NES) is a 26-item test covering three functional areas: integrative sensory dysfunction, motor incoordination, and impaired sequencing of complex motor acts. The NES was administered to 8 patients with chronic schizophrenia when they were on stable doses of standard antipsychotics (Time I) and after they were stabilized on clozapine (Time II). A paired t-test was utilized to examine change in the NES factor measuring prefrontal functioning (three items testing complex motor sequencing plus memory) from Time I to Time II. There was a statistically significant improvement in scores on this factor (t(7)=4.25 p<.005) even though changes across time on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale and the Negative Symptom Assessment did not reach significance in this small sample. Analysis of each individual item showed that no item by itself improved significantly. This finding indicates a generalized improvement in cognitive function in patients on clozapine. Results suggest that either standard medications impair performance on these tests or that clozapine actually improves some areas of cognitive functioning. Either explanation holds hope for improved outcomes for patients on newer antipsychotics.

A Resident Initiated Prite Review Course: Trials and Tribulations

The experience of developing a review course to study for the Psychiatry Resident's In-Training Exam (PRITE) is discussed. Residents in our program felt that the review course was useful with respect to the following: studying for the PRITE; future study for National Boards; and learning of new material.

Influence of Prior Level of Meaningfulness on Acquisition of New Meaning

Previous research has demonstrated that, when a word which has a neutral evaluative meaning is paired in a learning task with a word that has either positive or negative evaluative meaning, the neutral word acquires a new component of meaning. Research in verbal learning has shown that initial level of associative meaning influences the rate of learning of new materials. The objective of the present investigation was to select CVC syllables at two levels of associative meaning and pair them with words of positive and negative evaluative meaning to determine the influence of associative meaning on the acquisition of evaluative meaning. One group of college students received CVCs low in meaningfulness and one high in meaningfulness. After a conditioning period, change in evaluative meaning of the CVCs was assessed with a semantic differential. Data supported the hypothesis that conditioning would be related to initial level of meaningfulness. Change was significantly greater for the low meaningfulness CVCs than for the high, but both groups showed conditioning.

An Approach to the Use of Computers in the Instructional Process and an Evaluation

The existence of the modern high speed digital computer suggests a new approach to the solution of some enduring instructional problems. Course material and course logic may be stored in computer memory. It is possible for students to communicate with such computing systems through a variety of instruments, one of the standard devices being a console with a keyboard similar to that of an electric typewriter. As a part of a program to evaluate the use of computers in the instructional process a portion of a computer course in FORTRAN, a programming language, was developed. The computer as an instructional device does not, by its inherent characteristics, rigidly structure the teaching situation. It is therefore of value to first discuss the instructional characteristics of this particular computer course. These are as follows: 1. The attempt here is to use the computer as a device for achieving an intelligent individualization of instruction based on each student's actual performance in the course. Since each student can communicate with the system independently, and since the computer is able to make logical decisions based on an analysis of incoming student data, the capability exists for intelligent, precise and sophisticated adaptation of instruction to each individual. 2. The second instructional characteristic of the course is the use of the computer as a device for providing immediate knowledge of the correctness, partial correctness or incorrectness of responses to each student. 3. A third instructional characteristic is the use of the computer as a device for the immediate identification of erroneous conceptions, and the correction of these misconceptions by appropriate instruction. In this course an attempt is made to prevent the learning of new material until the student demonstrates a thorough and accurate understanding of his present assignment.