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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2833 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 21, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Can you think of a case of a “repeated behavior” inducing learning where the repeated behavior is not tied to a reward?

What I mean is: a piano student might practice a scale because of a desired goal, or to not be punished by their teacher; both are driven by a desire for preferred state (obvious). A student even in a very boring class that he doesn’t care about will remember some information because there is still a reward for the behavior (competing over peers, not having a bad grade). In these cases, the student may repeat a behavior (practicing) which induces learning, and this is driven by a reward, but what if the repetition occurs without a reward drive?

The reason for this question is that I find it interesting how reading a book results in a fraction of the information retention of using flash cards. You can read a passage repeatedly (repeating a behavior) yet not retain much information. But when you repeat with flash cards, your comprehension of the material is self-judged, which taps into the reward drive and results in more retention. There is also a “testing effect” phenomenon where doing tests somehow increases retention despite not having much repetition involved (the “somehow” is the reward drive, activated upon salient judgment).

So, if the desire for reward is a huge variable in learning, it’s interesting to think of a case where repetition results in negligible learning because of negligible reward-drive. However I’m at a loss of thinking of an example of this behavior. Maybe the phenomenon of highly autistic people never learning a social etiquette despite observing many repetitions and consequences? There are definitely cases where a behavior with zero repetition can result in great retention (you are not going to forget the accident that led to a broken leg, or the appearance of the most beautiful girl you’ve seen if only once, or the location of the largest pile of gold in a video game).

If you're sufficiently loose with your criteria for a scenario where reward is involved, such as a desired endgoal or outcome, then literally all rational behavior is driven by reward, because that's the definition of rationality. And not in the broad logical scale of rationalism, but in the colloquial someone acting with no goal is being purposeless and irrational. Why would you do anything at all if there wasn't some point? And then you can consider that point to be a "reward".

So unless you have a narrower definition of reward in mind, then regardless of whether learning is involved or not, the only case of behavior I can think of which is not tied to a reward is irrational behavior, and people with involuntary tics, and stuff like that.

I don't think the reward is actually causing the learning, but maybe you're not saying that. The reason flash cards are better than plan reading is because they require recall while reading (mostly) does not. A student who doesn't care about getting improving their flash card score will still benefit as long as they genuinely try to answer correctly.

But our willing to recall is likely predicated on a reward being pursued. A student makes an effort to recall and is either successful (rewarded) or unsuccessful (punished) and the strength of these are based on their desire for some contingent reward tied to the material.

"the strength of these" : these=the efforts?

It seems like this collapses into saying that learning requires effort/strategy and that people only expend effort on things they want to do. Do you intend to make a stronger claim?

The strength of learning is more tied to the salience of reward and punishment than mere quantity of repeated behavior. That is the most interesting variation of the thesis I suppose. Per my OP, we have cases of strong learning that do not involve repetition or effortful recall.

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