Predicting and Improving Memory Retention: Psychological Theory Matters in the Big Data Era
Michael C. Mozer, Robert Lindsey · Psychology Press eBooks · 2016
Human memory is fragile. The initial acquisition of knowledge is slow and effortful. And once mastery is achieved, the knowledge must be exercised periodically to mitigate forgetting. Understanding the cognitive mechanisms of memory has been a longstanding goal of modern experimental psychology, with the hope that such an understanding will lead to practical techniques that support learning and retention. Our specific aim is to go beyond the traditional qualitative forms of guidance provided by psychology and express our understanding in terms of computational models that characterize the temporal dynamics of a learner’s knowledge state. This knowledge state specifies what material the individual already grasps well, what material can be easily learned, and what material is on the verge of slipping away. Given a knowledge-state model, individualized teaching strategies can be constructed that select material to maximize instructional effectiveness.