berke@CS.UCLA.EDU (08/27/87)
I am involved with a project part of which is to teach mime to learning-disabled children. I maintain that: Mimicry behavior is integral to or forms the basis for animal learning. Directly training mimicry should therefore directly train learning ability. This is a simple, to me, an obvious claim. The question is, how to determine whether it is true? If you can answer the following simple question, I would appreciate hearing from you: Question 1: Are there any measures of general learning ability that are commonly accepted? If not, what measures of learning ability do you use (or know of), whether they purport to measure verbal learning, skill acquisition, or any other behavior that can be classified as learning? In "cognitive science" and related fields there is a lot of hubub currently about new and better brain models. I have my own which I call Network Recombination. I refer to "learning and memory" as a unified process of learning/memory because of the implications of my model. If you ascribe to a model of how brain activity produces the phenomenon of learning/memory (or "learning" or "memory" separately), I would appreciate an answer to the following question: Question 2: Does your model make any predictions about intermodal transfer of abilities? Specifically, say a subject's verbal skills are poor and so she does poorly on vocabulary tests which Thorndike (in Human Learning, 1931, p.174) considers "an excellent intelligence test." Say I now train the subject in physical skills to increase discrimination, analysis, and creative abilities (defined primitively below). How much will these abilities transfer to verbal or quantitative skills? What form will the transfer take? Or will there be none? Discrimination ability - seeing different parts in observation Analytical ability - breaking things into parts Creative ability - putting parts into new wholes I appreciate all opinions and advice, especially from people who have worked with learning-disabled children (and even more from people to whom this posting seems based on my ignorance and misconceptions). But I would like to specifically request those putting forth "mind models" for predictions of their models. I would like to QUANTIFY increase in general learning ability, and so the predictions of specific models with specific properties is necessary. If there is no such thing as general learning ability, then I would like to QUANTIFY transfer of abilities from physical to verbal or intellectual skills, or verify that there is none. Can you help me? I have posted this to several news groups. Perhaps it would be best to reply to me in e-mail, or to decide on a single group for follow-ups, perhaps sci.research. It has little traffic. Thank you in advance for all replies. Peter Berke berke@cs.ucla.edu (213) 394 - 6797