Enhancing Human Performance Issues, Theories, and Techniques (1988) / Chapter Skim
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4 Learning
4 Learning
Pages 39-60
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From page 39... ...
Clearly, benefits would accrue to an organization that is able to use sleeping hours for training and to speed the learning process during waking hours. This chapter investigates these possibilities, drawing on a variety of sources for its conclusions and conveying several interesting insights that may have practical implications.
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From page 40... ...
able to shorten the Morse code training of sailors by three weeks by giving additional training during the sleeping period. Such results tend to be dismissed since no EEG recordings were taken to verify sleep, but it may be that the costs of such training during the sleep period in terms of disrupted sleep and the negative consequences therefrom on later waking efficiency are minor compared with the benefits of accelerated training.
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From page 41... ...
In some circumstances, in fact, there can be a complete dissociation among these types of memories. Amnesic patients, for example, often show "source amnesia," which is an inability to recall episodic information, while showing normal retention of the semantic or procedural knowledge derived from those episodes (see, e.g., Schachter and Tulving, 1982~.
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From page 42... ...
, or by a repeated presentation on an unattended auditory channel of an adjective-noun pair ("Catalina ferry") , even when subjects cannot demonstrate that they recognize that such a word occurred in the experiment (Etch, 1984; Jacoby and Witherspoon, 1982~.
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From page 43... ...
. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS OF LEARNING DURING SLEEP From a theoretical perspective, researchers agree that a rigorous demonstration of learning during sleep should have the following prop
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From page 44... ...
Similarly, the requirement that material presented during the sleep period not disrupt sleep or be presented during periods of wakefulness or arousal may exclude procedures of practical significance, as illustrated in the section below on applications of sleepdisrupted learning. It remains to be demonstrated that certain types of stimulus-driven learning are possible during EEG-verified sleep.
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From page 45... ...
Language learning involves an interaction of stimulus learning building acoustic units and conceptual learning associating those units with semantic representations. Another domain in which learning during verified sleep might apply is in altering attitudes, affective reactions, or mood.
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From page 46... ...
Since cognitive performance deteriorates under sleep deprivation, such potential transfer of training during sleep may help the subject when he or she needs it most. With the technical advances that facilitate nighttime fighting, sleep management and performance under sleep deprivation are going to be ever more significant problems in the round-the-clock military engagements of the future, so the potential of such an application could be quite significant.
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From page 47... ...
The appropriate measures are those discussed earlier: priming of postsleep learning, repetition of presleep learning, postsleep perceptual identification of logical items presented during sleep, biasing of postsleep semantic or affective interpretation of items presented in a biasing context during sleep, and so forth. Should it prove possible to achieve such stimulus-driven learning without the subject's awareness, then a whole new domain of possible applications and additional basic research questions will arise.
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From page 48... ...
ACCELERATED LEARNING With respect to the goal of accelerating the learning process, that is, increasing the rate or depth, or both, of learning beyond that characteristic of typical training in a given task, three types of research are relevant. First, basic research on human beings as learners is crucial: knowing the basic characteristics of human attention, of the storage and retrieval processes that underlie human memory, and of the representation of knowledge and procedural skills in long-term memory provides a framework for examining practical techniques that are or are not likely to accelerate learning.
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From page 49... ...
The fact that efficient learning strategies may be transmitted from the instructor to the learner is only one of the ways in which these two research domains are related. We focus in this section on accelerated learning programs that attempt to provide a system for addressing instructor and student variables together.
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From page 50... ...
In controlled experiments using the same teacher with extended study utilizing SALTT procedures, modest improvements are reported relative to controls, for example, 10 percent improvement in learning German (Gasser-Roberts and Brislan, 19841; 25 percent improvement in learning English as a second language (Zeiss, 19841. A number of quasi experiments report that students can learn comparable information in one-third the time (see Schuster and Gritton, 1986~; however, most of these demonstrations suffer from a number of confounding factors (see below)
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From page 51... ...
THE SALTT CLASSROOM A SALTT classroom includes features that are not present in the traditional classroom. The environment is a pleasant living room-lounge atmosphere with comfortable chairs rather than rows of desks.
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From page 52... ...
For example, in a foreign language class, there might be a choral reading of the material. The second component is elaboration, which involves having the student use the material in new and different ways.
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From page 53... ...
One must be cautious, however, in assuming that these placebo techniques will work in situations in which subjects receive extended exposure to positive expectations. Support for Traditional Instructional Components The majority of the time in a SALTT classroom is spent in activities that are typical in the classrooms of expert teachers and have substantial psychological support.
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From page 54... ...
When tested too often, students are encouraged to read passively, forfeiting the benefits of generation and elaboration. Review of the SALTT Learning Literature There is an extensive published literature on accelerated learning techniques (at least three major books and over 2,800 pages of journal
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From page 55... ...
The history of the use of bloodletting in early medicine illustrates the danger of accepting testimonial evidence (see also Chapter 9 and the paper prepared for the committee by Griffins. Testimonial Evidence.
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From page 56... ...
SALTT proponents frequently claim to have demonstrated more efficient learning by shortening class time and showing comparable performance. For example, Schuster (1976a)
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From page 57... ...
has claimed that accelerated learning does not require physical relaxation. His own data show memorization is not enhanced by background music.
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From page 58... ...
Independent Evaluations There are few independent evaluations of accelerated learning, and these do not support claims that SALTT substantially enhances performance of normal students. The SALTT Society instills in its practitioners a belief that they will change the world (this comment was frequently made by attendees of the 1986 annual meeting)
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From page 59... ...
There is little evidence that the modest empirical benefits of SALTT instruction are derived from the nontraditional elements. Accelerated learning approaches deal with multiple aspects of instruction, including teacher motivation, student motivation, material presentation, elaboration, and assessment.
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From page 60... ...
SOURCES OF INFORMATION The subcommittee on accelerated learning focused its work largely on a particular learning package referred to as Suggestive Accelerative Learning and Teaching Techniques (SALTT)
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