Learning to Become an Expert: Reinforcement Learning and the Acquisition of Perceptual Expertise

Krigolson, Olav; Pierce, Lara J.; Holroyd, Clay B.; Tanaka, James W.

doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21128

Cited by 85 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In essence, our mechanisms of selective attention appear to select nothing from the external environment during these transient, inward-focused states. To be clear, we are not suggesting that sensory processing itself is turned off but, rather, that the highlighting of specific sensory inputs for higher levels of cognitive analysis-the prioritizing process that has long stood as the functional signature of selective attention in cortical processing (e.g., Heinze et al, 1994;Mangun & Hillyard, 1991;Woldorff & Hillyard, 1991)-is attenuated. Given this initial conclusion, however, we wanted to examine in a new round of studies whether the down-regulation of selective attentional processes during periods of mind wandering extends to other forms of attention.…”

Section: External Disengagement: Attention To Performance and Affectmentioning

confidence: 77%

Mind wandering and selective attention to the external world.

Handy¹,

Kam²

2015

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, the study of attention has long centered on characterizing the basic systems we have in our brains for selecting what external sensory information to channel to our higher level, capacity-limited processes in cortex. Less understood is how these attentional systems ebb and flow in their selectivity over seconds to minutes in the course of pursuing our daily activities. Toward illuminating this issue, here we review a recent series of studies we have conducted demonstrating that the degree to which our selective attention systems are engaged with the external environment is coordinated over these timescales such that they collectively engage and disengage together as a means of transiently modulating the depth of our cognitive investment in external sensory inputs. Although our studies have primarily focused on mind wandering in healthy, young participants, we suggest that people's ability to comprehensively attenuate their selective attention to the outside world plays a fundamental role in both normal human cognition and its clinical pathology.

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Section: External Disengagement: Attention To Performance and Affectmentioning

confidence: 77%

Mind wandering and selective attention to the external world.

Handy¹,

Kam²

2015

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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“…The authors examined ERP responses recorded before and after training. The N250, which has been linked with subordinate-level object recognition (Krigolson, Pierce, Holroyd, & Tanaka, 2009;Pierce et al, 2011), was increased posttraining to the group with which participants received individuation training. That is, N250s to Blacks were increased for participants who underwent individuation training to Black faces, but N250s were increased to Hispanics among participants who underwent individuation training to Hispanic faces.…”

Section: Overcoming Bias By Overcoming Categorizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Us versus them: Understanding the process of race perception with event-related brain potentials

Ito

Senholzi

2013

Visual Cognition

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“…The experimental task framework was adapted from the task designed by Krigolson et al [7]. The task was presented on the computer screen using a customized MATLAB (Release 2013a, The MathWorks, Inc., Natrick, MA) script in conjunction with Psychophysics Toolbox extensions [8,9].…”

Section: Experimental Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Anatomical Structures: a Reinforcement-Based Learning Approach

et al. 2015

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Given the reduced formal instruction time for many of the basic sciences within medical curricula, educators are searching for instructional methods that ensure students have the necessary foundational knowledge. The objective of this study was to design an anatomical structure identification reinforcement learning task for participants with minimal prior neuroanatomical knowledge. We predicted that the provision of immediate feedback would activate reinforcement learning mechanisms within the brain thus enhancing knowledge acquisition in novice learners such that performance accuracy (correct identification of neuroanatomical structures) improves from approximately 50 % (guessing) to 90 % by task completion. Ten participants learned to identify 10 neuroanatomical structures shown using two-dimensional (2D) coronal brain images over the course of 320 trials (20 trials per experiment block with 16 blocks total). An analysis of behavioural learning curves demonstrated the progression of learning, and each participant achieved a 90-100 % accuracy by block 13 (260 trials) for each of the 10 structures. The total task duration was approximately 30-35 min with all participants reaching proficiency by 25-30 min. Importantly, there was a significant increase in performance on a post-task knowledge identification test. Our results highlight the key role of reinforcement learning approaches to establishing foundational knowledge in the pre-clinical sciences, specifically anatomy, in a time-efficient manner. Further, progression of learning can be assessed through examination of learning curves. Designing effective pre-class exercises that make use of reinforcement learning theory as a means to promote learning may be an effective method to build base knowledge prior to classroom interactions in anatomy education.

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Learning to Become an Expert: Reinforcement Learning and the Acquisition of Perceptual Expertise

Cited by 85 publications

References 27 publications

Mind wandering and selective attention to the external world.

Mind wandering and selective attention to the external world.

Us versus them: Understanding the process of race perception with event-related brain potentials

Learning Anatomical Structures: a Reinforcement-Based Learning Approach

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