A New Free Short Course in Improving Learning and Memory

School is out. Whether you have school children, or attend school yourself, or participate in professional training, what shall you do this summer to get ready for this Fall? Because of the pandemic, school may or may not be conducted by distance education methods. Either way, school will start. What could be a better time to prepare for less-than-ideal school environments?

I think this is an opportune time for me to create a series of posts to help you or your children become more effective and efficient learners. . In just 14 short blog posts, I think I can tell you most of what you need to know and do to become a better learner, both for your short-term needs and as a lifelong learner.

I should be an expert on learning by now, after some 54 years as a college professor. I have written four books on learning and memory (see my web site at WRKlemm.com for details). I have published scientific research on memory. My blog posts in this area have over 3.5 million reader views. I have been on the editorial boards of six scholarly education journals,

My interest in learning and memory began with my own early childhood difficulties in school. I remember vividly my first day in a public school in Mobile, Alabama. It was a typical warm and humid Southern Fall morning as I walked by myself to school. In those days, most kids walked to a neighborhood school, leaving home alone and perhaps picking up a few classmates along the walk.  I think my mom took me to pre-school orientation, so all the orientation and procedural things had already been done before opening day—I don’t remember any of that. In fact, I don’t remember anything that happened in school that day. I do remember my exuberant strides on the walk to school. Along the way, I passed a beautiful row of hibiscus bushes lining the sidewalk. I paused to inspect the flowers, probed a bloom with my finger—damned bee stung me! This may have been a bad omen that hung a dark cloud over my school for the first three grades. During those first three years, two in Mobile and the third grade in a public school in Memphis, Tennessee, I remember nothing about school. Nothing. I do remember being interested in learning how to read, because I wanted to know what was in those comic-strip bubbles I saw in the newspaper my folks had at home.

I remember the fourth grade, because I hated school and hated my teacher. I don’t consciouslly recall anything I learned that year. The only event I remember was when movie talent scouts came into class to scout for prospects for the movie they planned called The Yearling. I and all the boys sat up straight, smiled at the visitors, and tried to get their attention, all to no avail. The scouts ended up picking a kid my age, Claude Jarman Jr., from Nashville, who played the lead in the film that came out in 1946. The only other thing I remember was my teacher. My fourth-grade eyes saw her as old and frumpy. For reasons I don’t remember, I do remember challenging her a lot. Whatever she tried to teach was tainted. I did poorly in school, made many Ds on the report cards that came out every six weeks. No doubt, the Ds were deserved. Certainly, I had an attitude problem.

I don’t remember anything about the 5^th and 6^th grades either. The first thing I remember about the 7^th grade was that I got to go to a new public middle school and swelled with budding grown-up pride as I paid the fare each day to ride a city bus to school. I don’t remember Memphis having school buses, though when I transferred to a county school in the 8^th grade there were school buses for rural kids.

The second thing I remember about the 7^th grade was my teacher. My hormone-flooded 7^th grade eyes saw her as young and gorgeous. Miss Torti was her name. In that first week of school, she had a boyfriend come to class, all decked out in Navy uniform finery. This was my first experience with the darkness of jealousy. The second jealousy event came when I realized that there was a girl in Miss Torti’s class who was always getting Miss Torti’s attention and praise. Maybe you had kids like her in one of your classes. Remember how when a teacher asked a questioned, there was always a kid who pumped up and down in her seat, raising her hand, “Ask me, ask me. I know!” This girl was like that, and most irritating of all, she always knew the right answer. I hated her. Well, I was not going to let her outshine me in Miss Torti’s eyes. If being smart is what got Torti’s attention, I decided I was going to be smarter than this twerpy girl.

Of course, I had no idea how to get smarter. But it was obvious that I had to memorize whatever Miss Torti was teaching. I began to pay attention. I thought about what I had to do to remember things. I actually studied for a change. Amazingly, in every six-week report period of the 7^th grade, I made all As. I had gone from Ds to all-As in just two years. Never got anywhere with Miss Torti though. Even so, I got in the habit of enjoying high grades, and learned even more about how to learn more effectively and efficiently. Early on, I learned memory principles and mnemonics. I never made less than an A in any course in any grade until I got to the University of Tennessee in a pre-veterinary curriculum. I did so well academically there that I got an early admission to Auburn’s College of Veterinary Medicine after just two years of pre-vet. I graduated with High Honors. Later, I got a Ph.D. from Notre Dame, finishing all course work and research in 2.5 years.

Later, my interest and success in learning led me to a PhD and a career in neuroscience, where I learned even more about learning and memory. Perhaps you can see why I feel compelled to share what I know about this subject.

The topics I will cover in this series are shown in the table below.

Lesson 1	The Stages of Memorizing Encoding, consolidation, retrieval, re-consolidation
Lesson 2	Getting Motivated How to get interested in boring subjects, boring texts.
Lesson 3	Paying Attention Learn how to focus, eliminate distractions.
Lesson 4	Think and grow smart The role of thinking in improving memory
Lesson 5	Taking Notes Which of the three types is best.
Lesson 6	Mind Mapping Simple ways to show idea relationships
Lesson 7	Strategic Approaches for Different Kinds of Learning Customize strategies, organize materials.
Lesson 8	Making Associations Using cues most effective
Lesson 9	Mnemonic Techniques Acronyms, Acrostics, Common-sense Thinking, Subject-Object-Verb, Story Chains, Memory Palace.
Lesson 10	Learning from Videos, Lectures, Readings
Lesson 11	Learning and Memorizing Math Concepts, formulas
Lesson 12	Deliberate Practice Make memorization systematic. Know what you don’t know.
Lesson 13	Especially Difficult Memory Tasks Vocabulary, dates/numbers, places,
Lesson 14	Lifestyle Matters Dealing with stress, exercise, sleep.

I will try to deliver a lesson every couple of weeks. I hope you will follow along and find your path to a life of successful learning.

Sign up to follow me, so you will get notified with each new post.

Brain Assignment of Values Varies with Context

This morning as you opened the refrigerator door, you looked at the food options for breakfast and asked yourself, “What shall I have for breakfast? Cereal topped with bananas? Sausage and eggs? Pancakes? Fruit bowl? Bagel? Each option has a value, which changes from morning to morning. Each morning, the brain you assess the relative values and decides which food choice counts the most for that particular moment. How does the brain determine that value?

Whether it is in the home, workplace, the school, or in inter-personal relationships, we typically face experiences to which we assign value. Often, we must weigh the relative values of several competing experiences in order to choose a single option to act upon.

In humans, it seems clear that value assignment depends heavily upon function in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). But how does this circuitry assign value? Two possibilities come to mind: 1) the neural response to the stimuli associated with an experience may be consistent across different contexts, or 2) the encoding may be relative, depending on the experience’s context. Relative coding seems likely for the breakfast choice example mentioned above. Any morning’s choice will not be the same every morning. The choice depends, among other things, on how you feel, your level of appetite, and your recent breakfast choices.

Also, value assignment can be thought of as a learning experience. If we have never tasted bananas, for example, our first exposure entails a value assessment on how good it tastes, which we then learn to apply to our future decisions about whether we want to have banana for breakfast or any other time. Clearly, feedback is important. How did it taste and how did that taste compare with other kinds of food that we have eaten, especially eaten recently? If you have had bananas every morning for a week, you may be tired of eating bananas. Then, there is the issue of the context in which perception occurs. Bananas might have more appeal for breakfast that they do for supper.

Research a decade or so ago revealed that our perception is stable across multiple contexts. For example, we can see a banana in the light or dark. We see a green banana or a ripe yellow banana, and still know it is a banana. We can even shut our eyes and feel the shape and still conclude it is a banana.

Assigning value to what we perceive could be another matter. Does value depend on the choice context, rather than being invariant across contexts? That is, do neural circuits re-scale value assignment depending on the context? Earlier fMRI brain-scan studies showed that context is important to value assessment in several areas (mPFC, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and cingulate cortex). A recent study has examined whether context-depending coding occurs in all PFC regions and how it is affected by feedback information. Twenty-eight human participants (both sexes) performed an instrumental learning task in which they were trained to maximize their monetary payoff. Choice options produce either reward (adding money to their account) or punishment (subtracting money). Subjects performed four learning trials while in the fMRI scanner in which they were repeatedly were presented with a pair of abstract symbols. For each run, they were presented eight different symbols pairs to produce four choice contexts (i.e., reward/partial feedback, reward/complete, punishment/partial, and punishment/complete). In each trial, they chose between two symbols associated with a certain outcome of money reward. Thus, the contexts were defined based on the possible outcome (either reward or punishment of receiving or losing a specified amount of money). Half of the trials presented complete feedback in which the outcome of the unchosen option was displayed as well, while in the other half of trials subjects were informed of only the value payoff of chosen options.

As repeated learning trials progressed, subjects were learning to optimize their payoffs. MRI signal change reflecting differences between good and bad outcomes was higher for chosen than for unchosen outcomes, with no difference between the chosen outcomes in terms of whether the feedback was partial or complete.

Increased activity in all of the PFC regions and cingulate cortex confirmed their role in encoding and processing value assessment. Anterior PFC activity increased for chosen outcomes, but decreased by unchosen outcome processing. Activity patterns also varied depending on whether partial or complete feedback was given. How does the brain assign different values according to situational context? The explanation is that the neurons must rescale their impulse discharge response to the perceived value of object properties relative to the specific context.

The amount of feedback, partial or complete, greatly affected context-dependent value learning, as revealed by brain activation in multiple regions of PFC and the cingulate cortex. Complete feedback produced the best learning and also caused a switch to assigning value depending on the context. Overall, the subjects learned equally well in reward and punishment context.

The authors used a complicated way to show what we already know from personal experience. We learn what we value from the feedback we receive from our choices, and the value we assign depends on situational context. We readily learn to like bananas on breakfast cereal, but bananas have much less value on pizza at dinner.

The demonstration of the role of prefrontal cortex is important. These results tell us that concussion, stroke, or other damage that affects this part of the brain will impair our ability to make reasoned judgments about the choices we make.

The take-home message is that value assessment occurs in multiple PFC areas in multiple ways, and neural activity does depend on situational context. The coding process is learned by experience and the comprehensiveness of feedback. This learning is consistent with what has been learned over decades of learning and memory research, as I summarize in my books on memory.

Sources:

Doris Pischedda, Stefano Palminteri and Giorgio Coricelli (2020).The effect of counterfactual Information on outcome value coding in medial prefrontal and cingulate cortex: from an absolute to a relative neural code. Journal of Neuroscience 15 April 2020, 40 (16) 3268-3277; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1712-19.2020

Klemm, W. R. (2012).  Memory Power 101. New York: Skyhorse.