March 18 2009
Rankin Williams, a graduate student in the Gauthier lab at Vanderbilt, led a discussion with members of both the Gauthier and Palmeri labs (PEN) about an article by Cepeda and colleagues (IMS). Rankin contacted the authors with the following questions that emerged during the discussion (between Rankin Williams and Hal Pashler):

(Rankin Williams) First, since performance in the final session in your study is actually pretty low (20% for objects in experiment 2), we were wondering what would happen if subjects were given a chance to re-learn the material at that point. Would savings in learning show the same dependence on gap as memory does?

We also discussed the differences in practice effects between memory tasks and perceptual learning tasks (where, if we remember well, the main story with gap has to do with improvements after sleep, not unlike your 1-day effect in Experiment 1).

Interestingly, perceptual expertise studies training people to individuate often use a task that involves memorizing the names of objects. In the end, we do not really care if they forget the names after the study- which is why we use post-tests including novel objects. We assume that the perceptual skills acquired outlive the memory of the name to object associations that we teach.

Tim Curran and Chris D'Lauro's study on spacing during the acquisition of expertise suggests that spacing benefits the acquisition of perceptual skills too. Are there reasons to think that the two spacing effects are related (i.e. would optimizing distributed practice for retention of the associations and acquisition of perceptual skills necessarily yield the same optimal gap?)