E-BO O K

The science of learning

and VR’s transformative
impact
By Mi c hae l Cas ale , PhD
Ch i e f S c ien c e O ff ic er, Stri vr
Since the studies of ancient Greek philosophers, humans have longed to understand learning
behaviors in order to better teach to them. But until now, most of the behavioral learning “best
practices” that have been uncovered were untapped, because we simply didn’t know how to put
them to use in real-world training scenarios.

With the advent of Virtual Reality (VR), we can finally deliver on the wealth of knowledge the
scientific community has curated over the last few centuries about how we learn. Here is a
succinct overview of what we know about how the human brain learns, and why VR is uniquely
positioned to teach to these things and disrupt learning and development as we know it.

Ecological validity:
realistic experience matters most

The brain learns by strengthening the connections between functionally distinct regions. The
strength of these connections helps us improve our ability to cope with the world around us and
understand danger and risk. Even in the earliest days of humanity, this learning function was
critical to understanding what food was safe to eat, where the nearest water source lay, and who
was friend versus foe. We still need to know these things, but our brains learn much, much more
every single day about how to survive and thrive in our lives and on the job.

When we learn, connections within our brain are strengthened. You see a green light, and your
foot presses down. Why? Because after years of driving, your brain has learned that green
means go, and the way to go is to press down on the accelerator. You don’t even think about it.
You just press. Your brain has recognized a simple coincidence between two functionally distinct
but connected areas: vision and movement. Your body has done this so many times, it’s an
unconscious habit.

Long-term retention and performance are elevated substantially when learners train under conditions
that mirror real-life scenarios, and are able to practice the same motor responses and receive the
same sort of feedback they’d get from their actions in the real world. You could never develop a
conditioned response to a traffic light by reading about what to do when the light turns green.

But with employee training, there is often a disconnect. Instead of experiencing a situation,
learners read about it, watch a video, hear a recording or listen to a lecture. None of these
approaches can compare to actual experience because they do not have ecological validity for
the learner. In other words, the information from the training environment doesn’t sufficiently
match the experience in the “real world,” so the brain connections are not secured.

However, training in VR does offer the ecological validity needed for learners to experience
realistic and varied training scenarios, as well as practice inline motor response.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 2

Perceptual fidelity:
proxy to the real world

While ecological validity encompasses multiple concepts, one of the most important is
perceptual fidelity: that the learning environment looks, sounds and feels like the one the
learner would experience in the real world. The perceptual information they take in has fidelity
with what would occur in a real situation. This highly realistic training experience is what allows
the brain to learn properly. Only with sufficient perceptual fidelity will effective training occur.
Think again of the conditioned response to “green means go:” without a realistic stoplight, a
steering wheel in your field of vision and a pedal by your right foot, the training environment
becomes too far afield from the real world, even if it is more valid than a 2D video or a manual.

This is one of the leading differentiators of Virtual Reality. With VR technology, it’s possible
to create a training experience that has ecological validity and provides sufficient perceptual
fidelity based on what we know drives real-world behavior change.

It’s important to note that real-world experiences are not always templatized. One day, a
customer may come into the store from the left, another day, from the right. So training with
a variety of circumstances will ultimately lead to better performance. Even small changes in
training parameters can affect performance in both good and bad ways. This is especially true in
motor learning, where movement and gaze come into play. The behaviors that accompany real-
world actions can only be practiced in an environment with high perceptual fidelity. Contrived
and rudimentary training environments, such as 2D video, can’t provide ecological validity, and
therefore, behaviors like eye gaze can’t be trained in the correct way.

When a VR environment has perceptual fidelity, meaning it’s created well enough to be a close
proxy to the real world, it’s much more likely to produce training that will actually translate.

Repetition learning

“The more frequently two things are experienced together, the

more likely it will be that the experience or recall of one will stimu-
late the recall of the other.”
A ristotl e

Since the days of Aristotle, formal investigations into learning behaviors have been around
as an organized body of knowledge. Today, we are able to capitalize on these learnings and
incorporate them into how we teach.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 3

By now, we all know to accelerate when the light turns green. Repetition is what strengthens
this learning in your brain. If your “green light” connections were somehow weakened, your
ability to successfully accelerate away from a green light would be greatly diminished. Luckily,
you drive often enough that the habit sticks.

Repetition is incredibly important when training for an action that may be required daily or only
when something goes wrong. The phenomenon of “one trial learning” has been proven to exist
for some simple, easy-to-learn rules; however, in general, memorization does not adequately
create behavioral change.

Traditional training methods and materials are not scalable to provide adequate repetition
training, especially those used to train in large or costly settings. But with VR, training can be
delivered on-demand, making endless repetition learning possible. It can provide access to the
same training experience over and over again at scale.

How many times does one need to practice a skill before it sticks? It depends, which makes
standardizing a rule for how many repetitions of a given task somewhat tricky. Another valuable
element of VR in this regard is the ability to assess trainees for proficiency at any given point in
time. This element can be used to determine when training has landed.

Retrieval-based training
Yes, repetition training is the ideal way to learn, but there’s a nuance to this technique. Training
with intermittence (periodic testing between training sessions) forces trainees’ brains to
engage in active retrieval of training information. This is not a novel concept. In Francis Bacon’s
1620 philosophical work Novum Organum, he wrote about the benefits of retrieval for learning:

“If you read a piece of text through twenty times, you will not learn
it by heart so easily as if you read it ten times while attempting to
recite from time to time and consulting the text when your memory
fails.”

There is a growing body of scientific evidence to support the notion that intermittent testing
during learning works more effectively than simply presenting information repetitively. Forcing
the brain to retrieve information intermittently benefits long-term retention. In particular, a 2014
academic paper called “Retrieval-Based Learning: An Episodic Context Account” describes
retrieval-based learning as “the finding that accessing knowledge does indeed change one’s
knowledge.”

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 4

Successful retrieval relies upon the ability to retrieve the context in which information was
learned. It’s a positive feedback loop: every time retrieval is successful, the same context
associated with that knowledge is updated, and used for future retrieval of the same
information. Retrieval-based methods during training clearly show an advantage for retention
of information. But it’s more resource-intensive to incorporate these techniques into current
training methodologies using traditional modes of training.

The training-on-demand format enabled by VR makes it much easier, more affordable and
scalable to incorporate retrieval-based methods into training, making for a more effective
training experience. Using Immersive Learning scenarios to provide lifelike context for
information retrieval results in deeper knowledge that trainees can apply to real-world scenarios.

Maintenance for forgetting

The brain naturally forgets information it is not using, because the neural hardware that enables
us to learn information is also physiologically designed to forget over time. For this reason,
learning benefits of any type of training eventually decay without proper maintenance. Periodic
repetition of information, with a proper cadence of training, is essential to the upkeep of learning.

Presenting learning sessions in a spaced-out way — rather than all at once in a “massed”
format — is one way to delay forgetting effects. But it’s important for trainers to understand
what the “forgetting curve” is like for specific types of content. This information can help inform
when it’s appropriate to retrain.

How can organizations assess this forgetting curve? It’s virtually impossible in most traditional
training methodologies — or at least too expensive. But with VR, you can assess real-world
knowledge on demand, testing learners on their knowledge in order to provide customized and
specific supplemental training over time to ensure learning doesn’t fade.

Feedback and reinforcement

Providing feedback during training is not a new concept, but almost no consideration had
been given to how feedback timing and presentation can influence outcomes. Yet, studies have
shown that in some learning scenarios, altering feedback presentation by just a few seconds
can significantly alter learning performance. Specifically, experiential learning — ”learning by
doing” — relies heavily on receiving immediate feedback once an action is taken or response
made. This truth is backed up by behavioral research literature and is based on a deep
understanding of how learning works in the brain.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 5

When a learner “learns by doing,” a neurochemical called dopamine is released less than a
second after a correct response is made. This neurochemical release influences how necessary
connections get strengthened in the brain. If the dopamine release does not occur, or occurs
too late, “learning traces” that were active during that very short window disappear. These
traces include things like visual information and other perceptual and conceptual information
that act as context to strengthen brain connections. No dopamine means a lack of learning.

Typical training methodologies give learners minimal summary feedback, and only at the end
of the training, if at all. The passive and observational approach used by trainers does not take
advantage of these critical feedback principles. VR, on the other hand, is quite well-suited to
providing accurate and adequate feedback in the moment. Users make decisions just as they
would in the real world, and the interactive VR module reacts accordingly. This type of training
feedback is critical to learning and retention.

Training variation
For many jobs, teaching to abstract concepts is critical, so common practice is to provide
concrete examples of these concepts in order to facilitate learning. Research literature supports
this method, but there’s a danger: teaching to one or two concrete exemplars can result in an
inappropriate transfer of information. With just a few examples to draw from, learners absorb
“surface” feature information that has nothing to do with the concept at hand, while critical
feature information may not be picked up. Simply put, learners learn the wrong things.

Studying many varied instances of a concept instead of studying one instance many times
helps remedy this problem. The variation that exists among all the instances of that concept
yield to a focus on the underlying structure, so learner attention is ultimately focused on the
important points rather than varying surface features. Studies have shown this to be true in a
wide range of learning domains.

Training variation may be an ideal approach, but for many current training methodologies,
creating a wide range of samples to train to is simply too resource intensive. Yet, with VR, it’s
possible to create huge numbers of varying examples and easily deploy them in training. When
done correctly by establishing the key learning outcomes, then creating the varying instances
to reinforce them, VR training becomes one of the most effective ways to learn.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 6

Desirable difficulties
Many training programs assume that training should be errorless to the degree possible.
Excessive guidance is introduced to ensure that learners make few mistakes. For instance,
when teaching how to spell the word manufacture, a student might be instructed to first copy
the word, then fill in missing letters for a few rounds, before being asked to write the entire
word from memory. Such small training steps ensure that learners don’t make mistakes.

Research on “desirable difficulties” for learners questions the virtues of errorless learning.
Desirable difficulties are manipulations of the conditions for learning that create challenges to
increase, not decrease, the frequency of errors — a practice which is shown to enhance long-
term retention and transfer.

Some of the ways that “desirable difficulties” are instilled in training include these two simple
practices:

1. Interleaving training concepts — Blocked training teaches one concept until learners
have achieved mastery. Interleaving training, on the other hand, uses mixed examples.
One study shows that learners who completed blocked versus interleaved training showed
differences on a final test. Those who were trained in a blocked fashion tested better
during the practice phase, But when retested a week later, learners in the “mixed condition”
performed better by a three-to-one margin.

2. Spacing training repetitions out — Inserting time intervals (hours or days) between
training repetitions proves superior to back-to-back training in studies. Cramming can
be effective for passing a particular test, but for long-term retention, spacing is typically
better. However, there’s a caveat: if the intervals between training repetitions are too long,
the learner’s ability to remember information dwindles. Once that retention approaches
zero, there are limited benefits to spacing out training repetitions. Early evidence has
demonstrated that, generally speaking, spacing on the order of days or even a week is
effective, whereas spacing on the order of a month or longer can diminish spacing benefits.

Being forced to overcome such difficulties forces the learner to learn better, and more
permanently.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 7

Arousal and affect
While it’s critical to have sufficient perceptual fidelity in the training experience, it’s also critical
to have the right amount of affective fidelity. In other words, to be effective, the training must
faithfully reproduce not just the environment and actions but the emotional response the
learner would have in the real world — things like stress, anxiety and surprise.

Knowing that you should “go” when the light turns green is not the same as automatically
pressing the accelerator, and in a stressful moment — the cars behind you are honking, there’s
traffic all around — you’re apt to panic.

Consider the Black Friday rush or the stress of helping a very frustrated caller: the emotional
tenor of a real-world situation can influence a person’s behavior in the moment and interfere
with critical cognitive behaviors like recognition and split-second decision making. Training
without affective fidelity makes it difficult for learning acquired during training to transfer to a
real-world environment.

Substantial research suggests that there’s an optimal level of physiological arousal that will
produce the best cognitive performance. Too little or too much arousal, and important cognitive
processes, like attention and engagement, can be negatively affected. By incorporating high
levels of presence and immersion in training via VR, we can start to replicate the optimal
arousal and affective states of real-world environments. This results in performance that
exceeds traditional training paradigms.

Takeaways
Until recently, scientific principles weren’t being applied to help guide training because the
constraints of real-world training environments simply didn’t allow it. But with the advent of
technologies like VR and its ability to scale far and wide across millions of employees, it’s now
possible to incorporate all of these principles into current training practice, and train more
effectively.

Strivr is leading the way by incorporating principles of perceptual fidelity, repetition learning,
retrieval-based training, maintenance for forgetting, reinforcement, ecological validity, training
variation, desirable difficulties and arousal into immersive experiences, at scale.

The science of learning and VR’s transformative impact 8

For more information please contact
info@strivr.com

©2019 Strivr Labs, Inc.