Novel lessons improve memory in elementary school children: evidence of behavioral tagging in humans

BALLARINI, FABRICIO

Conferencia; SAN 2012; 2011

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 researchgroups 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 isknown as behavioral tagging and it has not been explored in humans yet. Here we studied if anovel experience exerts a similar effect on learning and memory on a reading or graphicalactivities in the classroom. We found memory improvements in groups of students who hadexperienced a novel science lesson 1 hour before or after the reading of a story, but not whenthese events were 4 hours apart. Such promoting effect on LTM was also reproduced withanother type of novelty (a music lesson) and also after another type of learning task (a visualmemory). Interestingly, when the lesson was familiar, it failed to enhance the memory of theother task. Our results demonstrate a facilitatory effect of novel lessons on LTM formation inschoolchildren. Thus, a new teaching strategy to improve students? performance using a simplemethodology is described. Furthermore, our findings suggest that a behavioral tagging-likephenomenon could be translated into the classroom, being a novel approach to tackle retention ofdifficult syllabus? contents by their combination with novelty lessons.