L18 - Category Learning 2

Question 1

What is the Inert Knowledge Problem (Whitehead, 1929)?

Answer 1

• The process of understanding by learners does not happen to that extent where the knowledge can be used for effective problem-solving in real situations.

Question 2

What is ‘desirable difficulty’?

Answer 2

• When an increase in difficulty/mental effort is beneficial for learning.

Question 3

What is the best method of quizzing to foster learning?

Answer 3

• Transfer quizzes (testing relational categories) help both learning and definition.
• Definition quizzes only help with learning the definition. They do not help transfer.

Question 4

What is interleaving?

Answer 4

• Interleaving refers to broken practice/mixing examples from different categories.
• This is in contrast to massed/blocked practice common in most textbooks (one category at a time).
• Massed practice DOES NOT require you to first categorise the problem.
• Interleaving forces categorisation first.

Question 5

Are interleaving and desirable difficulties always the best study methods?

Answer 5

• Work from Rob Goldstone’s lab has shown that sometimes students self-selecting a blocking strategy can be beneficial, especially when within-category items are rather distinct from each other.
• John Sweller has argued that desirable difficulties are not desirable when the material is so complex that it intrinsically maxes out working-memory capacity. Then any extra difficulty from learning- mode is harmful.