Learning of schemas and making sense of complex events.

我在哪儿？这些人是谁，他们想要什么？在我们的日常生活中，我们通常可以相对容易地回答这些问题，尽管它们绝不是容易的问题。为了理解在特定情况下正在发生的事情，一个人必须感知、维护和整合来自多个模式和时间尺度的信息。我们的先验知识在我们如何理解和记忆周围环境方面发挥着重要作用。例如，走进图书馆，我们可能会看到很多书和人们在学习。事实上，我们的先验知识可以帮助我们组织新传入的信息，更好地理解复杂的事件。然而，到目前为止，我们意识体验的这一关键方面还没有得到广泛的研究，因为之前的大多数心理学研究都使用了过于简化的刺激（例如单个单词、图片），这些刺激不可能真实地模拟我们丰富多样的生活体验。我的论文使用视频刺激作为现实生活情景的实验控制替代品。我研究了不同类型的先验知识如何影响对复杂事件的理解和记忆。我们可以拥有特定于单一情况的先验知识——例如，我们是否开始听一场错过开头的讲座——或者我们的先验知识实际上可能更具概略性——例如我们对图书馆典型工作方式的了解，或者人们通常的行为方式。图式知识是通过多次接触（如图书馆）获得的，它代表了情节特征（如书籍、沉默）之间的共性，对我们的感知有很大的影响。例如，如果我们走进图书馆，我们期望看到人们在学习。在不同的实验中，我发现两种类型的先验知识对学习新信息都有有益的影响。我已经发表了一篇博士论文（Raykov et al., 2019）和一篇预印本（Raykov et al., 2018），并有两篇研究论文未发表。该奖学金的主要目的是准备这些结果发表，并撰写对先验知识的及时审查。这个奖学金也可以让我解决我论文中没有回答的问题。我之前的研究已经显示了先验知识的一些影响，然而，它并没有解决图式知识是如何发展的。其中一个原因是图式知识是在多个情节中学习的。这意味着，为了研究个人经验如何转化为图式知识，从长时间的训练中获取数据通常是不可行的。伊曼纽尔·巴博博士通过与克里斯·伯德教授的联系，向我提供了30名患者的数据，这些患者在5天内观看10集电视节目时，他们的大脑活动被记录下来（通过植入电极）。这将允许我测试个体如何从多个情节中提取信息以获取模式。一个具体的预测是，内侧颞叶区域将跟踪情节之间的重叠特征，以帮助图式的发展。当遇到有重叠特征的情况时，这可能是通过记住以前学过的信息来实现的。例如，在我们第二次访问图书馆时，我们可能会记住我们第一次访问图书馆，以便提取两次访问的共同信息（Schlichting & Preston, 2015）。该奖学金还将允许我开展一个试点行为项目，测试我们如何处理与我们的先验知识相矛盾的信息。这些研究项目将帮助我发展更大的资助提案，如ESRC新研究者奖。此外，奖学金将使我获得新的研究技能，并组织公众参与活动，将我的研究传播给更广泛的受众。

Where am I? Who are these people and what do they want? In our everyday lives we can usually answer these questions relatively easily, although they are by no means easy questions. To comprehend what is happening in a given situation one must perceive, maintain and integrate information from multiple modalities and timescales. Our prior knowledge can play an important role in how we comprehend and remember our surroundings. For instance, walking into a library, we might expect to see a lot of books and people studying. Indeed, our prior knowledge can help us structure newly incoming information and better understand complex events. However, this crucial aspect of our conscious experience has not been examined extensively to date, since most previous psychological research has used oversimplified stimuli (e.g. single words, pictures) that cannot possibly realistically mimic our rich and varied lived experience. My thesis used video stimuli to act as an experimentally controlled substitute of real-life situations. I examined how different types of prior knowledge affect the comprehension and memory of complex events. We can have prior knowledge that is specific to a single situation - e.g. were we to start listening to a lecture having missed the beginning - or indeed our prior knowledge could be more schematic - such as our knowledge of how libraries typically work or how people normally behave. Schema knowledge is acquired over multiple exposures (e.g. with libraries), represents the common among episodes features (e.g. books, silence) and can have large influence on our perception. For instance, if we walk into a library, we expect to see people studying. In separate experiments I found evidence that both types of prior knowledge can have beneficial effects on learning new information. I have produced a publication (Raykov et al., 2019) and a pre-print (Raykov et al., 2018) from my PhD work and have unpublished results for 2 research papers. The main aims of the fellowship are to prepare these results for publication and write a timely review on prior knowledge. The fellowship would also allow me to address questions left unanswered by my thesis.My previous research has shown some of the effects of prior knowledge, however, it has not addressed how schematic knowledge develops. One of the reasons for this is that schematic knowledge is learned over multiple episodes. This means that it often is practically unfeasible to acquire data from the prolonged training period in order to investigate how individual experiences are transformed to schema knowledge.Dr Emmanuel Barbeau, through links with Prof Chris Bird, would provide me with access to data of 30 patients, whose brain activity has been recorded (with implanted electrodes) as they watched 10 episodes of a TV show over 5 days. This would allow me to test how individuals extracted information from the multiple episodes to acquire schemas. A specific prediction is that medial temporal lobe regions would track overlapping features among episodes to help schema development. This might happen by remembering previously learned information when encountering a situation with overlapping features. For instance, during our second visit to the library we might remember our first visit to the library in order to extract the information common across both visits (Schlichting & Preston, 2015). The fellowship would also allow me to run a pilot behavioural project testing how we process information that contradicts our prior knowledge. These research projects will help me in the development of larger grant proposals such as ESRC New Investigator award. Furthermore, the fellowship would allow me to acquire new research skills and organise public engagement event to disseminate my research to a wider audience.