The right time to learn: mechanisms and optimization of spaced learning
By Paul Smolen, Yili Zhang, John H. Byrne. 2016
290 citations recorded by the source corpus.
For many types of learning, spaced training, which involves repeated long inter-trial intervals, leads to more robust memory formation than does massed training, which involves short or no intervals. Several cognitive theories have been proposed to explain this superiority, but only recently have data begun to delineate the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms of spaced training, and we review these theories and data here. Computational models of the implicated signalling cascades have predicted that spaced training with irregular inter-trial intervals can enhance learning. This strategy of using models to predict optimal spaced training protocols, combined with pharmacotherapy, suggests novel ways to rescue impaired synaptic plasticity and learning.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Cognitive Neuroscience
- Marcus K. Benna
- Stefano Fusi
- Walter Senn
- Pascal Leimer
- Michael H. Herzog
- Giacomo Indiveri
- Claudia Clopath
- Xiao-Jing Wang
In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Computational principles of synaptic memory consolidation (2016, background): “Thanks to their complexity, they can also reproduce the rich phenomenology of a plethora of biology and psychology experiments, including power-law memory decay 13,14 , synaptic metaplasticity 15 , delayed expression of synaptic potentiation and depression, and spacing effects 16,17 .”
- Spaced Training Forms Complementary Long-Term Memories of Opposite Valence in Drosophila (2019, unknown): “Prevailing models suggest that optimal interval timing coincides with the dynamics of cellular signalling processes that are essential for LTM (Zhang et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2013; Smolen et al., 2016) In Drosophila, LTM formation is maximal following 5 to 10 spaced training trials with a 15 min IT”
- Memorization Without Overfitting: Analyzing the Training Dynamics of Large Language Models (2022, methodology): “Motivated by replay methods from continual learning (see [30] for a survey) and work in promoting retention memories in humans such as repetition and spaced repetition [67, 68, 69], we study the effect of repetition and spaced repetition on the forgetting baseline in the left and right plots of Figu”