Learning through "memory flashes" instead of long and tedious repetition will help people with autism

A new learning method may lead to a significant improvement in visual perception abilities * According to the researchers, improving the perceptual ability of people with autism is a difficult challenge, which requires the patients to undergo lengthy and tedious training alongside the difficulty characteristic of autism to generalize the learning to other areas

A new study by Tel Aviv University offers a new learning method in autism that may shorten the learning process and even significantly improve the patients' achievements in regards to visual perception abilities. According to the researchers, improving the perceptual ability of people with autism is a difficult challenge for those patients, which usually requires long and tiring training alongside the difficulty characteristic of autism to generalize learning to other conditions.

The new method proposed by the researchers is based on "memory flashes", which last only a few seconds, and through which the subjects manage to both improve their visual perception abilities and to generalize the learning - that is, to excel in a similar task under conditions they have not studied before.

The research was conducted under the leadership of doctoral student Shira Klorfeld-Auslander and Prof. Nitzan Censor from the School of Psychological Sciences and the Segol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, in collaboration with Prof. Ilan Dinstein and his team from Ben Gurion University. The study was published in the journal Current Biology.

Prof. Censor explains: "In my lab we focus on learning in humans, and we already know today that a large part of the learning does not happen during the training process but afterwards, in processes of assimilation and strengthening of memory that take place 'off-line', for example when our brain is in sleep mode. However, the usual teaching methods still advocate the approach that longer practice equals better learning: if you want to play the piano, you should practice playing the piano for many hours every day until playing becomes natural to you. We have identified an alternative learning mechanism that uses 'memory flashes' - brief exposure to a task that has already been learned - to assimilate and generalize the developed skills."

As part of the study, the team of researchers examined about 30 adult subjects with high-functioning autism who were asked to learn a visual task (for example - identifying the direction of lines that appear for several thousandths of a second on the screen). However, instead of repeating the task every day, the subjects in the main experimental group studied the task in depth on the first day, and on the following days were exposed to the visual stimulus for only a few seconds. In the result test, even though the subjects learned the task for a minimal amount of time, their performance improved significantly, by about 20-25%, similar to normal repeated learning and similar to the achievements of subjects without autism.

Moreover, even when they were presented with a task under new conditions, which had not been learned, (for example when the learned stimulus is in a new location) the subjects who studied with the memory flash method showed improved performance than the subjects in the control group - that is, they knew how to generalize the skills learned in the first task. The success of the subjects in generalizing the learning to other conditions is considered quite significant because these are skills that people with autism have great difficulty with.

"Already in previous studies we have proven that it is possible to improve processes of assimilation of learning through memory flashes", says Prof. Censor. "We showed that there is no need for a long practice time in order to assimilate the task - it is enough to flash it for a few seconds to stimulate the relevant brain network, and the brain will already assimilate the material by itself. In this case we tested people with autism. Populations with autism sometimes have difficulties in repetitive learning and its generalization, that is, using learned tools in new tasks as well. By using short flashes of the visual stimulus in the learned task, we were able to produce learning that is identical to receptive learning in terms of its efficiency - that is, we significantly shortened the learning time. And the added value is the ability to generalize: the subjects performed an assignment under new conditions as if they had learned it fully."

According to Prof. Censor, the new method may have significant potential consequences - in a wide variety of fields. "The new research can pave the way for more meaningful learning of populations with autism, in a wide variety of tasks. In addition, the method may help in rehabilitation after neurological injuries, that is, in training the brain to regenerate the damaged connections, through abbreviated training."

for the scientific article