Cognitive Mechanisms of Desirable Difficulty for Memory

“理想难度”的概念，即在学习过程中使任务变得更难，可以在以后产生更好的记忆力，这一想法已经成为基础研究人员和实践者的强烈关注，他们希望将认知原理应用于现实生活中的教育环境。从纯粹的研究角度来看，这个问题也非常重要，因为它处于认知科学中几个大的和基本的领域(选择性注意、长期记忆和认知控制/分散注意力)的交叉点。解决为什么大多数类型的困难会导致干扰和较差的后来记忆(注意力分散或分心的典型代价)，但在某些情况下，会导致对瞬间困难事件的增强编码和更好的后续记忆(所谓的“理想困难”)，这一解决方案对许多领域的研究都很有价值。*我们目前理解中的一个主要差距是预测哪些困难将被证明是“可取的”(而不仅仅是分散注意力)。目前的建议是利用我们所知道的认知控制和选择性注意的基本机制，以及不同类型的信息在大脑中是如何顺序处理的，以更好地预测哪种任务困难应该对后来的记忆产生“令人满意的”(增强)效果。研究认为，“难度”不是一个任务范围的概念，而是与特定加工阶段的特定干扰效应有关。这一建议结合了行为、电生理和眼动数据，以精确研究注意力控制的时时刻刻的波动，以及这如何影响记忆编码。*了解这些基本的认知机制如何相互作用，在更困难或更具挑战性的表现中产生增强的记忆，将对基础和应用研究领域做出重大贡献。这些发现将有助于统一一系列认知心理学的基本理论。除了基础研究之外，这项工作还将使教育和培训部门受益，为开发改进学习方法的应用方法奠定坚实的基础。

The concept of "desirable difficulty" the idea that making a task more difficult during learning can produce better memory later on has become a strong focus for both basic researchers and practitioners who want to apply cognitive principles to real-life educational settings. From a pure research perspective, this question is also extremely important, as it sits at the intersection of several large and fundamental fields in cognitive science (selective attention, long term memory, and cognitive control/divided attention). A solution to why most kinds of difficulty lead to interference and poorer later memory (a typical cost of divided attention or distraction), but in some circumstances lead to enhanced encoding and better subsequent memory for in-the-moment difficult events (so-called "desirable difficulty"), would be valuable to many areas of research. *** A major gap in our current understanding is predicting which difficulties will turn out to be "desirable" (rather than just distracting). The current proposal takes what we know about fundamental mechanisms of cognitive control and selective attention, and how different kinds of information are processed in sequence in the brain, to make better predictions about what kinds of task difficulties should produce "desirable" (enhancing) effects on later memory. It is proposed that "difficulty" is not a task-wide concept, but has to relate to particular interference effects on specific processing stages. This proposal uses a combination of behavioural, electrophysiological and eye movement data to precisely study moment-to-moment fluctuations of attentional control, and how this affects memory encoding.*** Understanding how these basic underlying cognitive mechanisms interact to produce enhanced memory during more difficult or challenging performance would make a strong contribution to both basic and applied research fields. These findings will help to unify basic theories across a range of cognitive psychology. Beyond basic research, this work would benefit education and training sectors, giving a strong grounding for developing applied approaches to enhanced learning methods.