AN EXPERIMENT IN UNLEARNING

AN EXPERIMENT IN UNLEARNING

Although names and dates have been altered to protect the innocent, the following story is not true – but the point it is making is valid, and is well demonstrated.

Experimental Psychology 201.

Setting – Animal Behaviour Laboratory.

Subject Matter – Rats, and Humans.

Method:

Place one rat, and one University student (of roughly equal intelligence)in separate cages, and starve for three days.

Construct an access way leading to five separate, parallel, dead-end passages.  The passages are numbered 1 to 5.

Place a container holding cheese at the far end of passage-way 4.(p4)

Procedure. Phase One.

1.  Release the rat into the access way.

Observed Result: The rat smells cheese, enters the access-way, goes to Passage-way 1 (P1), and enters looking for the cheese.  Failing to find cheese in P1, the rat exits, then goes to P2, P3, then finally at the end of P4 the rat locates the cheese, nibbles contentedly and consumes the cheese.  Happy rat!

2. Repeat the exercise, starving the rat for three days then releasing the rat to search for the cheese.

Observed Result: The rat searches, repeating exactly the same behaviour as in the first trial.

3. Repeat the exercise exactly as before.

Observed Result: The rat presents exactly the same behaviour as in the previous trials – although a little more quickly.

4. Repeat the exercise yet again.

Observed Result: Released rat momentarily hesitates at the entrance of P1, P2, P3, then quickly explores P4, finding the predictable reward. Very smug and happy rat!

Interpretation:

Rat demonstrates an effective, fast learning style, needing only four exposures to determine and predict a pattern of events.  Rat could be seen to have a high, measurable level of intelligence.

5. Repeat the whole exercise, but this time move the cheese from the end of P4 to the end of P5.

Observed Result: Released rat enters the access way, smells the cheese, and goes straight to P4, expecting to find the cheese. Failing to find cheese the rat quickly exits P4, and reverts to its original, established routine, exploring P1, P2, P3, P4, before finally locating the cheese at the end of P5.  Happy rat.

Procedure. Phase Two

1. Release starved human (variety ‘student’) into the access way.

Observed Result: Student smells the cheese (thinks ‘pie’), enters P1 to find food. Failing to locate any tasty morsel, student exits P1 and sequentially explores P2, P3, and P4 before finally locating the food at the end of P4.  Student hogs into the food (making a complete pig of himself, and looking for beer to wash it down).

2. Repeat the procedure as with the rat, and student is observed to similarly repeat his behaviour, as per the rat.

3. Repeat the procedure again, and student is observed to go straight to P4, successfully locate the food, scoff it down looking very pleased with himself.

Tentative Observation; does this faster learning suggest to us that the student is marginally more intelligent than the rat?

4. Repeat the entire exercise, but this time shift the cheese from P4 to the end of P5.

1.  Observed Result: Released student goes straight to P4 expecting to find food. Student fails to find food, looks confused, hesitates, then exits P4 to check the number ‘P4’ on the entrance.  Ascertaining that he is in the right place, student re-enters P4 to again look for the food.  Failing yet again to find food student mutters to himself, goes back to the access-way, counts aloud the sequence of passages off (using his fingers as a calculator),says aloud, ’I’m sure it was P4 where the food always is’, re-enters to have a final search, before finally shouting out “There’s been a mistake, someone has stuffed up.  Where is my food!  I’m not doing this for fun you know!”

(Student is subsequentially paid off and asked to leave the laboratory).

INTERPRETATION

Overall results suggest that the student is a marginally (but significantly) faster learner than the rat.  The student may tentatively be seen to be more intelligent than the rat.

The rat however is specifically faster and more able to unlearn than the student.

Therefore although the student may be seen to be a faster learner than the rat, the student shows a distinct tendency to hold onto ‘learned information’ even though the situation may clearly demonstrate that the information, the ‘knowledge’, is no longer valid.

DISCUSSION

Results of this experiment strongly indicate that the rat is likely to be a better survivor than the human in a changing environment.  The rat is more likely to abandon learned information when it is no longer strategically useful, whereas the human is more likely to cling to units of ‘knowledge’ even though those old learnings may threaten his future survival.

It can also be projected from this experiment that if the human attains erroneous ‘knowledge’, (that is, information that it accepts as being true, valid and therefore useful) it is likely to hold on to this misleading ‘knowledge’ even though other more valid information might be available.  The tendency to retain ‘knowledge’, along with the restricted ability (or unwillingness) to ‘unlearn’ specific information may be a significant factor in limiting the progress of human knowledge and understanding.

RELEVANCE

It is recommended that teachers, trainers and information presenters should be mindful of units of ‘prior knowledge’ that their students may bring to a learning situation, and take specific steps to address the ‘unlearnings’ necessary to allow more relevant learnings to take place.

As in the case of the study of ‘dyslexia’, such erroneous prior knowledge may be the product ‘authoritarian statement’ – the words of a respected writer, publication, teacher, authority or elder; they may also be the long-term residue of early child-like understandings, accepted, but never examined nor challenged; and they may also have been accepted from commercial advertising information – often presented as ‘research based’ information – which is presented purely to support a commercial, money-making venture.

In any event the recipient (indeed most people) is likely to hold information which he has never been caused to question.  These information units survive in the form of ‘personal truths’ – unrecognised pivotal beliefs that he is not even aware that he holds.

SUMMARY

Effective learning may initially involve significant unlearning of erroneous ‘knowledge’.

Laughton King

30.12.12