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The effects of overlearning on retention were investigated with serial lists of words of high and low frequency of linguistic usage. For both types of materials, amount recalled showed a positively accelerated increase with degree of overlearning. These increases in recall resulted from improved retention of relatively difficult parts of the lists. Speed of relearning to complete mastery was a direct function of degree of overlearning.
It was hypothesized that as overlearning leads to "mindlessness," the individual components of a task become relatively inaccessible to consciousness and therefore unavailable to serve as evidence of task competence. This may lead to a decrement in performance if circumstances, for example, a label connoting relative inferiority, lead one to question one's ability. This was tested in the first experiment by varying practice on a task (no practice, moderate practice, and overpractice) by label assigned to subjects (no label, assistant, boss). As predicted, performance decrements resulted for the no practice and overpracticed subjects who were assigned the inferior status label but not for the moderate practice subjects for whom the task components were still salient. In a second experiment it was found that the debilitation could be prevented for an overlearned task by making components of the task salient. Implications for the vulnerability of experts to these performance debilitations are explored.
Structured Learning Therapy, a skill training program consisting of modeling, role playing, social reinforcement, and transfer of training was used to teach 56 elderly inpatients (mean age = 65.74) the interpersonal skill of "Starting a Conversation." The effects of three levels of overlearning and the addition of concrete (monetary) reinforcement on skill acquisition and transfer were also assessed. All patients acquired the target skill, and there was some evidence of transfer of skill training. Individuals not receiving concrete reinforcement during training showed greater skill transfer compared to those individuals receiving additional incentive. A transfer-enhancing effect of overlearning was found on the Structured Post-test, but no effect was obtained for the other post-test transfer measures.
The study elucidated the role of deployment of attention in the appearance and magnitude of the overlearning reversal effect (ORE) with simultaneously occurring aggressive and neutral stimulus dimensions in a discrimination reversal-shift paradigm with 60 undergraduate college students. Confirming expectations, significantly larger overlearning reversal effect (ORE) was produced on the number of instrumental response errors and verbalized attentional errors with the less complex and less salient neutral, relevant-stimulus dimension. The findings that greater ORE, as reflected in attentional errors, was observed with the less salient but also less complex neutral stimulus dimension support the attentional explanations of the ORE phenomenon. These results contrast with those observed with traditional geometric stimulus material where greater complexity is associated with greater ORE.
Eight subjects were given overlearning of a pursuit tracking task twice which they experienced once either half or one year previously. Distributed practice was employed in the present experiments. Finger skin blood flow (SBF) and pulse rate (PR) were measured throughout the experiments. SBF was smaller during trials and during intertrial rests than during rest with eyes closed, but the difference between during trials and during intertrial rests was not significant. It was supposed that the reason for this effect of overlearning was that the increase in motivation resulted in a high level of activation during intertrial rests. The changing pattern of SBF during trials became similar to that in adding task of the previous study (1977) because of learning or habituation. In the second half of the trials, however, SBF during trials gradually became smaller.
In three experiments with free-flying honeybees, the previously discovered overlearning-extinction effect was replicated under different conditions and shown to depend on magnitude of reinforcement: The effect appeared in training with a 50% sucrose solution but not with a 20% solution. The results prompted a fourth experiment in which successive negative contrast was demonstrated: The animals were disturbed to find the 20% solution on a distinctive target that always before had been baited with the 50% solution. The conclusion is that the overlearning-extinction effect is an instance of contrast and can be understood in terms of frustration engendered by unrealized anticipation of reinforcement.
Conflicting results in the literature concerning the influence of overlearning on subsequent feeling of knowing (FOK) judgments for unrecallable items were resolved in an experiment that contrasted within-subject and between-subject designs. In the between-subject design, participants gave FOK judgments about items all of which had been learned to a criterion of either one or six correct recalls 4 weeks earlier. In the within-subject design, these judgments were made about the same items, half of which had been correct once and half six times. Results showed that the effect of overlearning on FOK ratings was more detectable in the within-subject design than in the between-subject design. It is suggested that future experiments on metacognition should use within-subject designs for maximal detectability of the effect of an independent variable on metacognitive judgments.
Contemporary learning theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) provide an explanation for the phobic avoidant features but do not account fully for the intrusive phenomena that are so characteristic of the disorder. This article hypothesizes that a primitive learning center in the limbic system rehearses traumatic memories immediately following exposure to trauma, thus inducing durable memories of the sources of novel threat. It is postulated that the mechanism developed during early evolution when, in the absence of cognitive mechanisms, automatic learning following single exposure to novel threat would have conferred survival value on the species. With evolution of the brain, a second cortical pathway developed for the cognitive processing of trauma memories. It is possible that synchrony between the two phylogentically distinct pathways may be lost in vulnerable individuals under conditions of extreme stress resulting in failure of cortical inhibition of limbic trauma rehearsal mechanisms. A mismatch between archaic biological mechanisms and novel cues in the modern environment also may play a role in triggering traumatic memories and associated fight and flight reactions. The intrusive phenomena of PTSD thus may reflect an "overlearned survival response" in those in whom the putative limbic rehearsal mechanism evades cortical control. The heuristic value and limitations of such an evolutionary-learning theory are discussed.
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