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Retrieving information from memory makes that information more recallable in the future than it otherwise would have been. Optimizing retrieval practice has been assumed, on the basis of evidence and arguments tracing back to Landauer and Bjork (1978), to require an expanding-interval schedule of successive retrievals, but recent findings suggest that expanding retrieval practice may be inferior to uniform-interval retrieval practice when memory is tested after a long retention interval. We report three experiments in which participants read educational passages and were then repeatedly tested, without feedback, after an expanding or uniform sequence of intervals. On a test 1 week later, recall was enhanced by the expanding schedule, but only when the task between successive retrievals was highly interfering with memory for the passage. These results suggest that the extent to which learners benefit from expanding retrieval practice depends on the degree to which the to-belearned information is vulnerable to forgetting. doi: 10.3758/MC.38.2.244

We describe an investigation of student learning of the concept of pressure in a static liquid. We document patterns of student answers and explanations in response to written and interview questions. We find that many undergraduate students fail to develop a correct understanding of pressure in this context. Many students have difficulty identifying the forces that act on a liquid and relating these forces to pressure. We describe the development and assessment of research-based instructional materials designed to address student difficulties with pressure and provide evidence that these materials can improve student understanding. [c] 2010 American Association of Physics Teachers. [DOI: 10.1119/1.3192767]

Smith and Minda (1998) and Blair and Homa (2001) studied the time course of category learning in humans. They distinguished an early, abstraction-based stage of category learning from a later stage that incorporated a capacity for categorizing exceptional category members. The present authors asked whether similar processing stages characterize the category learning of nonhuman primates. Humans (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Macaca mulatta) participated in category-learning tasks that extended Blair and Homa's paradigm comparatively. Early in learning, both species improved on typical items more than on exception items, indicating an initial mastery of the categories' general structure. Later in learning, both species selectively improved their exception-item performance, indicating exception-item resolution or exemplar memorization. An initial stage of abstraction-based category learning may characterize categorization across a substantial range of the order Primates. This default strategy may have an adaptive resonance with the family resemblance organization of many natural-kind categories. Keywords: category learning, prototypes, stages of learning, abstraction, primate cognition DOI: 10.1037/a0016573

The authors present the results of a study on classical conditioning as it relate to cue competition. Topics include the use of conditioned response and training, observations on learning, and identifying cueing and miscues when testing with laboratory rats.

It has been acknowledged for years that teaching does not equal learning but existing research has been able to provide society with a better understanding of what actually occurs in a typical student's brain. New knowledge in neuroscience is redefining possibilities for education. This will be demonstrated from the perspective of five critical aspects in the brain's learning process as observed in the brain of a typical student named Julie.

Research in cognitive science has stimulated a new view of learning based on cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. This view holds that: learners construct understanding for themselves, understanding is to know relationships and knowing relationships depends on having prior knowledge. The brain does not simply store an image or directly record visual pictures of any event. Most researchers believe that all conscious and subconscious knowledge and behaviors are constructed as complex systems within the brain.

The multiple intelligences theory holds that all humans have eight intelligences, do not have the same strength in each intelligence area and do not have the same amalgam of intelligences. A high school classroom is a garden of intelligences where teachers must gauge the strength of the logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, kinesthetic, spatial, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences of each student. Allowing students to use their knowledge about how they learn best can increase their enthusiasm, raise achievement levels and develop their other intelligences.

Research in cognitive science has stimulated a new view of learning based on cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. This view holds that: learners construct understanding for themselves, understanding is to know relationships and knowing relationships depends on having prior knowledge. The brain does not simply store an image or directly record visual pictures of any event. Most researchers believe that all conscious and subconscious knowledge and behaviors are constructed as complex systems within the brain.

It has been acknowledged for years that teaching does not equal learning but existing research has been able to provide society with a better understanding of what actually occurs in a typical student's brain. New knowledge in neuroscience is redefining possibilities for education. This will be demonstrated from the perspective of five critical aspects in the brain's learning process as observed in the brain of a typical student named Julie.

The multiple intelligences theory holds that all humans have eight intelligences, do not have the same strength in each intelligence area and do not have the same amalgam of intelligences. A high school classroom is a garden of intelligences where teachers must gauge the strength of the logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, kinesthetic, spatial, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences of each student. Allowing students to use their knowledge about how they learn best can increase their enthusiasm, raise achievement levels and develop their other intelligences.