A Test of Direct Learning (Michaels et al, 2008)

Direct learning (Jacobs & Michaels, 2007) is an ecological hypothesis about the process of perceptual learning. I describe the theory here, and evaluate it here. One of the current weaknesses is little direct empirical support; the 2007 paper only reanalysed earlier studies from the new perspective. Michaels et al (2008) followed up with a specific test of the theory in the context of dynamic touch. The study was designed to provide data that could be plotted in an information space, which provides some qualitative hypotheses about how learning should proceed.

There are some minor devils in the detail; but overall this paper is a nice concrete tutorial on how to develop information spaces, how to test them empirically and how to evaluate the results that come out. The overall process will benefit from committing more fully to a mechanistic, real-parts criterion but otherwise shows real promise.  

Evaluating 'Direct Learning'

In my previous post I laid out the direct learning framework developed by Jacobs & Michaels (2007). In this post, I'm going to evaluate the central claims and assumptions with a mechanistic eye. Specifically, my question is mainly going to be 'what are the real parts or processes that are implementing that idea?'. 

This is a spectacularly complicated topic and I applaud Jacobs & Michaels for their gumption in tackling it and the clarity with which they went after it. I also respect the ecological rigour they have applied as they try to find a way to measure, analyse and drive learning in terms of information, and not loans on intelligence. It is way past time for ecological psychology to tackle the process of learning head on. I do think there are problems in the specific implementation they propose, and I'll spend some time here identifying those problems. I am not identifying these to kill off the idea, though; read this as me just at the stage of my thinking where I am identifying what I think I need to do to improve this framework and use it in my own science. 

Direct Learning (Jacobs & Michaels, 2007)

The ecological hypothesis is that we perceive properties of the environment and ourselves using information variables that specify those properties. We have to learn to use these variables; we have to learn to detect them, and then we have to learn what dynamical properties they specify.

Learning to detect variables takes time, so our perceptual systems will only be able to become sensitive to variables that persist for long enough. The only variables that are sufficiently stable are those that can remain invariant over a transformation, and the only variables that can do this are higher order relations between simpler properties. We therefore don't learn to use the simpler properties, we learn to use the relations themselves, and these are what we call ecological information variables. (Sabrina discusses this idea in this post, where she explains why these information variables are not hidden in noise and why the noise doesn't have to be actively filtered out.)

Detecting variables is not enough, though. You then have to learn what dynamical property that kinematic variable is specifying. This is best done via action; you try to coordinate and control an action using some variable and then adapt or not as a function of how well that action works out.

While a lot of us ecological people studying learning, there was not, until recently, a more general ecological framework for talking about learning. Jacobs & Michaels (2007) proposed such a framework, and called it direct learning (go listen to this podcast by Rob Gray too). We have just had a fairly intense lab meeting about this paper and this is an attempt to note all the things we figured out as we went. In this post I will summarise the key elements, and then in a follow-up I will evaluate those elements as I try and apply this framework to some recent work I am doing on the perception of coordinated rhythmic movements.