IBCN   20355
INSTITUTO DE BIOLOGIA CELULAR Y NEUROCIENCIA "PROFESOR EDUARDO DE ROBERTIS"
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Memory in elementary school children is improved by an unrelated novel experience
Autor/es:
BALLARINI F; MARTINEZ MC; DIAZ PEREZ M; MONCADA D; VIOLA H
Lugar:
Barcelona
Reunión:
Congreso; FENS, Barcelona, España Julio 14-18, 2012.; 2012
Resumen:
Abstract             Education is the most traditional means that has a formative effect on the human mind, being learning and memory its foundation. Laboratory experiments from different research groups showed an improving effect of novelty on the formation of a long-term memory (LTM) of unrelated information acquired some time before or after the novel experience. This process is known as behavioral tagging and it has not been explored in humans yet. Here we studied if a novel experience exerts a similar effect on learning and memory on a reading or graphical activities in the classroom. 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 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 demonstrate a facilitatory effect of novel lessons on LTM formation in schoolchildren. Thus, a new teaching strategy to improve students? performance using a simple methodology is described. Furthermore, our findings suggest that a behavioral tagging-like phenomenon could be translated into the classroom, being a novel approach to tackle retention of difficult syllabus? contents by their combination with novelty lessons.