Errorless Learning of Novel Routes Through a Virrtual Town in People With Acquired Brain Injury

          The article I chose was called “Errorless learning of novel routes through a virtual town in people with acquired brain injury.” The researchers of this article were Joanne Lloyd, Gerard Riley, and Theresa Powell. I chose this article because I was interested about learning the concept of errorless learning and how it affects people with brain injuries.

          Errorless learning can be defined as “presenting information across acquisition trails in such a way that the learner is prevented from making errors, learning exclusively by repeated exposure to correct information.” This type of learning contrasts with trial-and-error learning in which has been found to be effective for people who have cognitive problems. Such people can include those who suffer from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and acquired brain injuries (ABI). Past research has shown that this type of learning demonstrated to help people learn novel associations between associated and non associated words and also with verbal learning tasks. Also it is known that there are many different types of brain injuries which can have different effects on people depending on where their damage is in the brain. Some key regions in the brain that are important for memory are the parietal lobe, frontal lobe, temporal lobe, the hippocampus, and the amygdala which all have a part in the learning process. The goal of this experiment was to “compare the benefits of errorless learning and trial-and-error route learning for people with memory deficits due to ABI in a task.” 

          There were a total of 20 participants with acquired brain injuries who have attended outpatient rehabilitation services. The criterion for a participant to participate in this study was to provide evidence of memory deficit based on neuropsychological testing. Participants then learned two routes as a part of their task around a virtual town. One of the routes had full guidance in the errorless learning paradigm. The second route used the learning method of trial-and-error.

          Researchers found that errorless learning was significantly more effective than trial-and-error learning. These participants were able to learn a task which demonstrated that it could facilitate complex information and improve their performance on spatial learning tests.

Source:
Lloyd, J., Riley, G. A., & Powell, T. E. (2009). Errorless learning of novel routes through a virtual town in people with acquired brain injury. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 19(1), 98-109. doi:10.1080/09602010802117392