Making Sense of Forgetting, Today

Remember this statement… it pervades workplace learning everywhere! Memory is flawed…

At the end of the day, no matter what you do, it is universally understood that 80% of what you present/teach will be forgotten.?

Up until recently, that ‘fact’ was ubiquitous: it was established by Ebbinghaus in 1885, and has been robustly confirmed by memory researchers ever since.?

Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory and whose infamous ‘forgetting curve’ described (see: Figure 1) a progressive decrease in knowledge retention with elapsed time since learning.

Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve was unquestioned by B. F. Skinner, whose radical behaviorist ideas dominated learning sciences for half a century. You and I and everyone else received all our school in one form or other of a Skinner designed ‘contingencies of reinforcement’ methodology. More often than not it is familiar to people as Rewards for something good or Punishments for something bad.?

In this excerpt from his utopian work Walden Two (1948), Skinner describes his conception of memory that not only quantifies the woeful inadequacies of his behaviorist ‘contingencies of reinforcement’ techniques but in addition, outlines clearly that students (more than 60 years ago) confirmed how ‘Affect’ meant more than ‘Effect’ for retention of learning.?

"For several years the conviction had been forcing itself upon me that I was unable to contemplate my former students without emotion. The plain fact was that they frightened me. I avoided them upon every occasion and tried to forget them. So far as I could see, their pitiful display of erudition was all I had to show for my life as a teacher, and I looked upon that handiwork not only without satisfaction, but with actual dismay.?

What distressed me was the clear evidence that my teaching had missed the mark. I could understand why young and irresponsible spirits might forget much of what I had taught them but I could never reconcile myself to the uncanny precision with which they recalled unimportant details. My visitors, returning at commencement time, would gape with ignorance when I alluded to a field that we had once explored together – or so I thought – but they would gleefully remind me, word for word, of my smart reply to some question from the class or the impromptu digression with which I had once filled out a miscalculated hour. I would have been glad to agree to let them all proceed henceforth in complete ignorance of the science of psychology, if they would forget my opinion of chocolate sodas or the story of the amusing episode on a Spanish streetcar.?"???????????????????????????????????

?B.F. Skinner, Walden Two 1948

Skinner himself with these words points out the obvious – the only person learning in a classroom defined by contingencies of reinforcement (Rewards and Punishments) is the teacher. The students, while seemingly present, are neither represented in the learning nor engaged – except when it is about them (my smart reply to some question from the class) or something that introduced Me, Here, Now (impromptu digression with which I had once filled out a miscalculated hour).

Skinner had it all, and because he forced himself to ignore brain in favor of Stimulus—Response (Operant Conditioning) he missed the obvious.

A brain-based pedagogic model that does three simple things reverses Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, eliminates Skinner’s radical reinforcement methods, and guarantees learning with deep understanding, 100% retention, and zero attrition. The three simple items are described in more detail later:

1.??????Millers Law: Magical Number 3 plus or minus Two - focus on working memory

2.??????Hebb’s Rule: Neurons that Fire together Wire Together - focus on cognitive rehearsal

3.??????Kieran’s Principle: A/E = C - Affect before Effect facilitates communication

In schools, in workplace settings, and in instructional design programs, evidence is clear that memory, while volatile and challenging, can be transformed into a positive acquisition in the learning space. It does however require a paradigm shift for designers and facilitators. The big take away is aligned with how twenty-first century critical thinking illuminates modern working spaces, in a time when working memory is exceedingly taxed and retention is a premium:

Trust the Model because it works EVERY time!

References

O' Mahony, T. K., Thompson, E., & Carr, R. (2019). Brain-centric Design transforms a learning community immediately and forever. Paper presented at the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace, Columbia University Teachers College - New York.