Memory in Elementary School Children Is Improved by an Unrelated Novel Experience

Education is the most traditional means with formative effect on the human mind, learning and memory being its fundamental support. For this reason, it is essential to find different strategies to improve the studentś performance. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that a novel experience could exert an enhancing effect on learning and memory within the school environment. Here we show that novel experience improved the memory of literary or graphical activities when it is close to these learning sessions. We found memory improvements in groups of students who had experienced a novel science lesson 1 hour before or after the reading of a story, but not when these events were 4 hours apart. Such promoting effect on long-term memory (LTM) was also reproduced with another type of novelty (a music lesson) and also after another type of learning task (a visual memory). Interestingly, when the lesson was familiar, it failed to enhance the memory of the other task. Our results show that educationally relevant novel events experienced during normal school hours can improve LTM for tasks/activities learned during regular school lessons. This effect is restricted to a critical time window around learning and is particularly dependent on the novel nature of the associated experience. These findings provide a tool that could be easily transferred to the classroom by the incorporation of educationally novel events in the school schedule as an extrinsic adjuvant of other information acquired some time before or after it. This approach could be a helpful tool for the consolidation of certain types of topics that generally demand a great effort from the children.

教育是塑造人类心智的最传统途径，学习与记忆是其核心支撑。正因如此，探寻提升学生学业表现的多元策略至关重要。基于前期研究基础，我们提出假设：在校园场景中，新颖体验可对学习与记忆产生增强效应。本研究结果显示，当新颖体验与文学或图形学习时段较为邻近时，可改善对应学习活动的记忆效果。我们观察到，在阅读故事前1小时或后1小时参与过新颖科学课程的学生群体，其记忆表现得到显著提升；但当两类事件间隔达4小时时，则未出现该促进效应。这种对长期记忆（long-term memory, LTM）的促进效应，在另一类新颖体验（音乐课程）以及另一类学习任务（视觉记忆任务）后也得到了重复验证。有趣的是，当课程为熟悉内容时，则无法提升另一项任务的记忆表现。我们的研究结果表明，在正常校园时段内经历的、与教育相关的新颖事件，可提升常规课堂所学任务或活动的长期记忆效果。该效应仅局限于学习前后的关键时间窗口内，且尤其依赖于相关体验的新颖属性。本研究结果提供了一种可便捷应用于课堂的实践策略：将与教育相关的新颖事件纳入课程安排，作为其前后时段习得的其他信息的外在辅助手段。该方法可成为帮助儿童巩固通常需要付出大量认知努力的特定类型学习内容的有效辅助手段。