Neuroscience
Richard Gregory: "Why is learning slow? Is it set by physiological (hardware) limitations, or is it due to cognitive (software) strategy?
As learning can be single-trial, in dangerous situations, the general slowness may well be a cognitive strategy - following Mill's Methods for induction. Many instances are needed to establish that A is related to B. The more the noise (and other possibilities etc.), the more instances are needed, so learning should be slower.
The experiment would control environment 'noise', to see whether learning is generally faster in a simpler, more easily predictable world.
I tried this 50 years ago on Guppy fish, but they died! (The tank had metal sheets with many regular holes, giving moire patterns, which moved more or less consistently with the movements of the fish.)
If children are brought up in a simpler, more regular environment - do they learn faster, with fewer trials? Would this extend to any learning? How generally is the inductive strategy applied?"
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Professor Richard L. Gregory CBE FRS is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol.
Photo credit: Martin Haswell.
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Neuroscience
Why is learning slow?
Richard Gregory: "Why is learning slow? Is it set by physiological (hardware) limitations, or is it due to cognitive (software) strategy?As learning can be single-trial, in dangerous situations, the general slowness may well be a cognitive strategy - following Mill's Methods for induction. Many instances are needed to establish that A is related to B. The more the noise (and other possibilities etc.), the more instances are needed, so learning should be slower.
The experiment would control environment 'noise', to see whether learning is generally faster in a simpler, more easily predictable world.
I tried this 50 years ago on Guppy fish, but they died! (The tank had metal sheets with many regular holes, giving moire patterns, which moved more or less consistently with the movements of the fish.)
If children are brought up in a simpler, more regular environment - do they learn faster, with fewer trials? Would this extend to any learning? How generally is the inductive strategy applied?"
--
Professor Richard L. Gregory CBE FRS is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Bristol.
Photo credit: Martin Haswell.
Return to menu for 'most important psych experiment never done.'
- Mike Posner: Learning Difficulties
Why have I had such a hard time learning to change a light bulb, fix a car and cook dinner, while for others it seems such a breeze? Generally I did pretty well in school but ran into deep problems with analytic geometry, inorganic chemistry and differential...
- What's The Most Important Psychology Experiment That's Never Been Done...?
To mark 100 email issues of the Research Digest - the British Psychological Society's free roundup of the world's best new psychology research - and to inspire the next generation of researchers, I asked leading psychologists and bloggers to write...
- Obit: Prof. Richard Gregory
Recently, from The Telegraph: Prof. Richard Gregory of the University of Bristol...
- Food For Thought
My favorite psychology podcast, Australia's ABC Radio National's All in the Mind recently reviewed some research which suggests that the amount of fish oil ingested affects our emotions. The blurb on their site says: "It’s now recognised that...
- Interested In Studying Motivation And Learning? Volunteer As An Ra In The Mml Lab!
Volunteer undergraduate research assistants are needed for projects on motivation and learning. The Motivation, Metacognition, and Learning laboratory studies how people think about their own intelligence, memory, motivation, and learning. We conduct...