Effects of Prior Knowledge on Memory: Implications for Education

The encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of events and facts form the basis for acquiring new skills and knowledge. Prior knowledge can enhance those memory processes considerably and thus foster knowledge acquisition. But prior knowledge can also hinder knowledge acquisition, in particular when the to-be-learned information is inconsistent with the presuppositions of the learner. Therefore, taking students' prior knowledge into account and knowing about the way it affects memory processes is important for optimization of students' learning. Recent behavioral and neuroimaging experiments have shed new light on the neural mechanisms through which prior knowledge affects memory. However, relatively little is known about developmental differences in the ability to make efficient use of one's knowledge base for memory purposes. In this article, we review and integrate recent empirical evidence from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience about the effects of prior knowledge on memory processes. In particular, this may entail an extended shift from processing in the medial temporal lobes of the brain toward processing in the neocortex. Such findings have implications for students as developing individuals. Therefore, we highlight recent insights from cognitive neuroscience that call for further investigation in educational settings, discussing to what extent these novel insights may inform teaching in the classroom

Experimental insights into the socio-cognitive effects of viewing materialistic media messages on welfare support

This experimental study draws on cultivation, dispositional materialism, and schema theories to test the effects of commercial media viewing on material values and welfare support. Data were collected from a cross-sectional British sample using a web-survey priming methodology (N = 487, ages 18-49). Findings suggest that 1) materialism and anti-welfare orientations operate through associated and contiguous cognitive-affective mechanisms that can be triggered by momentary exposure to materialistic media messages (MMMs). 2) Heavy consumers of television shows that valorize and regularly portray wealth, fame, and luxury are significantly more materialistic and anti-welfare than lighter consumers. 3) Chronic attention to MMMs may indirectly increase support for the governmental enactment of punitive welfare policies via cultivating self-enhancement related schemas, which when instantiated, decrease dispositional orientations towards empathy, altruism, and communality. This research contributes nuanced theoretical and experimental insights into how ubiquitous commercial media potentially undermine prosocial development and societal well-being

Sleep spindle density predicts the effect of prior knowledge on memory consolidation

Information that relates to a prior knowledge schema is remembered better and consolidates more rapidly than information that does not. Another factor that influences memory consolidation is sleep and growing evidence suggests that sleep-related processing is important for integration with existing knowledge. Here, we perform an examination of how sleep-related mechanisms interact with schema-dependent memory advantage. Participants first established a schema over 2 weeks. Next, they encoded new facts, which were either related to the schema or completely unrelated. After a 24 h retention interval, including a night of sleep, which we monitored with polysomnography, participants encoded a second set of facts. Finally, memory for all facts was tested in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Behaviorally, sleep spindle density predicted an increase of the schema benefit to memory across the retention interval. Higher spindle densities were associated with reduced decay of schema-related memories. Functionally, spindle density predicted increased disengagement of the hippocampus across 24 h for schema-related memories only. Together, these results suggest that sleep spindle activity is associated with the effect of prior knowledge on memory consolidation. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Episodic memories are gradually assimilated into long-term memory and this process is strongly influenced by sleep. The consolidation of new information is also influenced by its relationship to existing knowledge structures, or schemas, but the role of sleep in such schema-related consolidation is unknown. We show that sleep spindle density predicts the extent to which schemas influence the consolidation of related facts. This is the first evidence that sleep is associated with the interaction between prior knowledge and long-term memory formation

Neural activation patterns during retrieval of schema-related memories: Differences and commonalities between children and adults

Schemas represent stable properties of individuals’ experiences, and allow to classify new events as being congruent or incongruent with existing knowledge. Research with adults indicates that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved in memory retrieval of schema-related information. However, developmental differences between children and adults in the neural correlates of schema-related memories are not well understood. One reason for this is the inherent confound between schema-relevant experience and maturation, as both are related to time. To overcome this limitation, we used a novel paradigm that experimentally induces, and then probes for task-relevant knowledge during encoding of new information. Thirty-one children aged 8–12 years and 26 young adults participated in the experiment. While successfully retrieving schema-congruent events, children showed less medial PFC activity than adults. In addition, medial PFC activity during successful retrieval correlated positively with children’s age. While successfully retrieving schema-incongruent events, children showed stronger hippocampus (HC) activation as well as weaker connectivity between the striatum and the dorsolateral PFC than adults. These findings were corroborated by an exploratory full-factorial analysis investigating age differences in the retrieval of schemacongruent versus schema-incongruent events, comparing the two conditions directly. Consistent with the findings of the separate analyses, two clusters, one in the medial PFC, one in the HC, were identified that exhibited a memory x congruency x age group interaction. In line with the two-component model of episodic memory development, the present findings point to an age-related shift from a more HC-bound processing to an increasing recruitment of prefrontal brain regions in the retrieval of schema-related events

Towards a cognitive-sociological theory of subjectivity and habitus formation in neoliberal societies

Disconcerting findings from nascent sociological research suggest that Western youth are developing subjectivities that reflect neoliberal discursive formations of self-interest, competitiveness, and materialism. However, propositions about: (1) the cognitive-affective mechanisms that explain how youth acquire and reproduce neoliberal ideology, or (2) the dispositions and behaviours that typify a neoliberal subject, remain vague. Therefore, this article provides a novel conceptualization of these two psychosocial facets that can help advance understandings and investigations of the emerging modes and societal consequences of neoliberal subjectification, Specifically, it reviews major theoretical tenets from the respective literatures on neurocognitive development, social cognition, neoliberalism, and neoliberal hegemony. It then synthesizes these tenets within a modified habitus formulation to sketch a testable cognitive-sociological model to explain and explore some of the distinct dispositional values, attitudes, and practices that youth raised in societies with institutionally and culturally prevalent neoliberal norms and discourses potentially may develop and enact

Optimal Resource Allocation in the Brain and the Capital Asset Pricing Model

Using recent findings from brain sciences, we relax the implicit CAPM assumption of sufficient brain resources, and model human brain as solving two optimization problems instead of one, which are: 1) Optimal resource allocation in the brain. 2) Mean-variance optimization. A security market line with varying slopes (flat, upwards, and downwards) arises depending on the resource allocation decisions in the brain. Size, value, and momentum effects also emerge in this enriched framework. This suggests that the classical CAPM is not misspecified. Rather, what appears as misspecification may be the result of ignoring the optimal resource allocation problem in the brain

Naïve to expert: Considering the role of previous knowledge in memory.:Considering the role of previous knowledge in memory

Contains fulltext : 229250.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)17 p

The effects of perceptual fluency, schema congruency, and sexuality on attribute ratings

Previous literature on schema congruency has largely found that schema incongruence is associated with less positive attribute ratings. However, one recent study found the opposite effects where schema incongruence was associated with more positive ratings. A potential reason for their opposing results was that this study analyzed the schema incongruent stimuli of “a sensitive man” and “an assertive female” as one group and did not examine for differences according to gender; however previous literature has stated that schemas are entrenched different according to gender. The purpose of this study was to replicate this previous study that supported a positive affect for schema incongruence to determine whether this potential gender confound was responsible for the inconsistent results, while also looking to see if manipulating perceptual fluency (how easy something is to read) could mitigate this negative impact, particularly for sexuality schemas. Despite previous robust effects, fluency did not impact attribute ratings. We suggest that this is potentially because the schemas for sexuality are too entrenched. Congruency did impact attribute ratings, and in almost all cases individuals who were schema congruent for sexuality were rated as more positive than those who were schema incongruent, suggesting that gender did play a role in previous findings

Differences in the neural signature of remembering schema-congruent and schema-incongruent events

New experiences are remembered in relation to one's existing world knowledge or schema. Recent research suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) supports the retrieval of schema-congruent information. However, the neural mechanisms supporting memory for information violating a schema have remained elusive, presumably because incongruity is inherently ambiguous in tasks that rely on world knowledge. We present a novel paradigm that experimentally induces hierarchically structured knowledge to directly contrast neural correlates that contribute to the successful retrieval of schema-congruent versus schema-incongruent information. We hypothesize that remembering incongruent events engages source memory networks including the lateral PFC. In a sample of young adults, we observed enhanced activity in the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), in the posterior parietal cortex, and in the striatum when successfully retrieving incongruent events, along with enhanced connectivity between DLPFC and striatum. In addition, we found enhanced mPFC activity for successfully retrieved events that are congruent with the induced schema, presumably reflecting a role of the mPFC in biasing retrieval towards schema-congruent episodes. We conclude that medial and lateral PFC contributions to memory retrieval differ by schema congruency, and highlight the utility of the new experimental paradigm for addressing developmental research questions