Subject: Transferability of learning, was perception of flutter in 100 Hz tone From: Kevin Austin <kevin.austin@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:53:17 -0400 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Eliot has picked up on the next layer of my question before I got to it. The question of transfering (poor term) perceptual development is, in my experience, highly individual. Across a wide range of teaching, I have found a continuum of learning patterns related to this. Some people can learn one example, and transfer this generalized learning to many other skill sets, while some others struggle to learn every possible situation in order to master the task. Within the environment in which I work, those who can transfer learning with ease, from one situation to another are called "smart", "fast" or "intelligent" etc, while those who may demonstrate the same knowledge, but it was learned by learning all the possible combinations, are not given these names. An example, as I understand it is in computerized chess playing, where the BIG MACHINE "simply" does an extended tree-search. There is a loose category of students called "slow learners". My general experience here is that the slow learner will solve problems through processes of generalization of rules, as s/he doesn't remember the details or minutia. My experience with many 'fast learners' who remember everything they have ever seen or heard, has been that many of them known an enormous amount, but understand little. I see somewhere in here the question of 'recoding / redistributing' brain resources. To me, the implication is that (beyond the level of transducing energy), greatly simplified, "perception" is possibly a process determined by memory. Best Kevin > Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:09:15 -0400 > From: Eliot Handelman <eliot@xxxxxxxx> > Subject: Re: Perception as memory > > Richard M. Warren wrote: >> >> Kevin Austin has started this thread with his 8/23 posting >> describing how it is possible to teach many of his listeners to >> hear out the note "in a 10-item chord" by presenting the note in >> isolation as well = > as a component in the intact chord. He interpreted his observations > as=20 >> >> representing both a refinement of memory and an improvement of=20 >> perceptual ability. He asked whether listeners would be able to >> do=20 >> this with other sounds. >> > Prof. Warren and others, > > I understood Kevin to be asking something different. In ear- > training,=20 > one problem is to teach students to hear the > individual tones of a chord so that they can write these down. =20 > Essentially, the students must learn perceptual decomposition of > a complex sound into its components. If you learn to perceptually=20 > isolate one tone of a chord through priming, as in Kevin's class=20 > experiment, can this generalize to a perception of tones in a > chord=20 > WITHOUT priming? > > > -- eliot > > ------------------------------ > > End of AUDITORY Digest - 26 Aug 2009 to 27 Aug 2009 (#2009-198) > ***************************************************************