Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:2952] Study vs. Learning
From: Bob Leamnson (RLEAMNSON@UMassD.Edu)
Date: Wed 06 Mar 2002 - 13:34:42 MET
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 08:34:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Bob Leamnson <RLEAMNSON@UMassD.Edu> Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:2952] Study vs. Learning
Human learning implies understanding and remembering. Memory,
however, can be episodic or semantic. Some non-human animals have episodic
memory, but to our knowledge, none have semantic memory because they lack
language that is symbolic. Human learning (the product, not the process)
must, then, involve verbal thought.
The reason the linear vs. non-linear debate will go on till both
parties are exhausted, is that the disputants are, again, conflating
learning (the process) with studying. Even our rudimentary understanding of
brain processes dictates that the reception and processing of information is
massively parallel and virtually nothing about it of consequence could be
described as linear. But people were learning long before they knew
anything at all about their brains, so the critical epistemological question
is not how people learn, but what is the most effective way to study.
If semantic memory is one intended effect of study, it follows that
non-linear study will make no sense at all, because verbal processes
(including thought) rely for meaning on the precise order (linearity) of the
words.
It's quite possible to read pages or even paragraphs in a book in some
idiosyncratic sequence and still learn something. But no one will read a
sentence non-linearly. Verbal thought that is produced or perceived as such
is always linear.
Bob Leamnson
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