Learning and Memory of Knowledge and Skills: Durability and Specificity

By analyzing the results of experiments that use a wide variety of training tasks including those that were predominantly perceptual, cognitive, or motoric, this volume answers such questions as: Why do some people forget certain skills faster than others? What kind of training helps people retain new skills longer? Inspired by the work of Harry Bahrick and the concept of "permastore," the contributors explore the Stroop effect, mental calculation, vocabulary retention, contextual interference effects, autobiographical memory, and target detection. They also summarize an investigation on specificity and transfer in choice reaction time tasks. In each chapter, the authors explore how the degree to which reinstatement of training procedures during retention and transfer tests accounts for both durability and specificity of training. Researchers and administrators in education and training will find important implications in this book for enhancing the retention of knowledge of skills. "You have to read this book. Anyone interested in training will want to read it. This book provides the theoretical bases of the acquisition of durable skills for the next decade. It advances and demonstrates a new principle of skill learning that will prove to be as important as the encoding specificity principle and its corollary, the principle of transfer appropriate processing. This new principle is that highly practiced skill learning will be durable when the retention test embodies the procedures employed during acquisition. This principle, and the other important findings reported in this text, will have a great impact on the evolution of memory theory and on the wide range of applications." --Douglas Hermann, University of Maryland

Table of Contents:
Preface - Alice F Healy and Lyle E Bourne Jr Durability and Specificity of Facts and Skill Optimizing the Long-Term Retention of Skills - Alice F Healy et al The Long-Term Retention of a Complex Skill - William R Marmie and Alice F Healy Part-Whole Training of Tank Gunner Simulation Exercises The Contribution of Procedural Reinstatement to Implicit and Explicit Memory Effects in a Motor Task - David W Fendrich et al The Effects of Contextual Interference on the Acquisition and Retention of Logical Rules - Vivian I Schneider et al A Generation Advantage for Multiplication Skill Training and Nonword Vocabulary Acquisition - Danielle S McNamara and Alice F Healy A Long-Term Retention Advantage for Spatial Information Learned Naturally and in the Laboratory - William T Wittman and Alice F Healy Long-Term Performance in Autobiographical Event Dating - John J Skowronski et al Patterns of Accuracy and Error Across a Two-and-a-Half Year Time Span Training and Retention of the Classic Stroop Task - Deborah M Clawson et al Specificity of Practice Effects An Identical Elements Model of Basic Arithmetic Skills - Timothy C Rickard and Lyle E Bourne Jr Acquisition and Retention of Skilled Letter Detection - Janet D Proctor and Alice F Healy Acquisition and Transfer of Response-Selection Skill - Robert W Proctor and Addie Dutta The Specificity and Durability of Rajan′s Memory - Rodney J Vogl and Charles P Thompson