Glossary

This terminology is used in my articles on education, sleep, and creatvity (some of this terminology is my own):

• Abstractness - dissociation from detail that increases applicability of knowledge
• Acquisition rate - speed of learning
• Active recall - bringing knowledge back up from memory (e.g. as opposed to passive reading)
• Adaptability - brain's ability to adapt via learning and forgetting
• Applicability - range of usability of knowledge
• Behavioral space - set of behaviors that result in no penalty
• Behavioral system - set of behaviors that develop in a set social context
• Biphasic sleep - sleep in two blocks: night and siesta
• Circadian cycle - ~24h cycle of changes in the state of body and mind
• Circadian phase - the time of day measured in hours since natural waking
• Circadian sleep propensity - sleepiness determined by the body clock
• Childhood amnesia - natural long-term memory deficit in children
• Chronic stress - harmful stress that does not go away
• Cloze deletion - question in the form of a sentence in which a keyword is replaced with 3 dots
• Coherence - degree of meaningful connectedness of knowledge that makes remembering easy
• Concept network - set of interlinked ideas taking part in the thought process
• Conceptual computation - reasoning occurring in a concept network
• Conceptualization - emergence of concepts in a concept network in development
• Consistency - degree in which knowledge is free of contradictory information
• Consolidation - increase in memory stability as a result of review or in sleep
• Democratic school - school run by kids with minimum adult supervision
• Deschooling - free education without compulsory schooling
• Factory model of education - education based on mass production philosophy
• Forgetting curve - curve showing loss of knowledge over time
• Free learning - self-directed learning without constraints and coercion
• Free running sleep - sleep that is not artificially regulated (e.g. with alarm clocks, medication, etc.)
• Fundamental law of learning - law stating that efficient learning is always pleasurable
• Generalization - process in which details are forgotten for the big picture to emerge
• Homeostatic sleep propensity - fatigue caused by tiredness of waking
• Homeschooling - home-based education
• Idiocracy problem - problem of smart people having few or late children
• Increading - reading incrementally
• Incremental learning - method for mastering knowledge from the web (fast and durable)
• Incremental reading - method of converting books and articles into durable knowledge in student's mind
• Incremental video - method of massive learning and review of lectures (e.g. from YouTube)
• Interference - forgetting induced by new learning
• Learn drive - natural curiosity that drives learning
• Learned helplessness - loss of drives in conditions of loss of control
• Learntropy - measure of attractiveness of a lecture, book, etc.
• Knowledge darwinism - competition of memories for the best place in the jigsaw puzzle of memory
• Knowledge redundancy - memorizing same memories in different contexts to boost recall
• Knowledge valuation network - any neural subsystem capable of estimating the value of knowledge
• Memory complexity - complexity of memory that determines how difficult it is to retain it
• Memory optimization - process in which memories get better organized in sleep
• Minimum information principle - claim that simple memories are easy to retain for longer
• Natural creativity cycle - undisturbed sleep-wake cycle that maximizes creativity
• Passive review - undemanding processing of knowledge (e.g. reading as opposed to active recall)
• Passive schooling - traditional approach to education in which most of the learning choices are made by a teacher
• Pattern completion - ability of a neural network to recognize incomplete input (e.g. a blurry picture)
• Permastore - everlasting memory
• Polyphasic sleep - unhealthy sleep practice in which sleep is dispersed in many small blocks throughout the day
• Problem valuation network - any neural subsystem capable of estimating the expected reward in problem solving
• Push zone - range of external pressure that may improve learning outcomes
• Priority queue - sequence of pieces of knowledge sorted by priority
• Rational procrastination - strategic procrastination that neglects jobs of lower priority
• Redundancy - extra load of knowledge that may add to its quality
• Regress zone - range of external pressure that undermines learning outcomes
• Retrievability - probability of recall of a given memory
• Self-directed learning - self-learning in which materials and goals are determined by the student
• Self-learning - learning on one's own (without a teacher)
• Semantic learning - efficient learning based on good comprehension
• Sleep phase - positioning of the preferred waking time (in clock hours)
• Spaced repetition - learning technique that ensures long-term retention of knowledge
• Spacing effect - better memory effect of review delayed in time
• Spacing effect gain - mathematical definition of the spacing effect
• Stability - durability of a given memory
• Stabilization curve - the most important curve in the optimization of learning: stabilization as a function of retrievability
• Stabilization decay - gradual decrease in the potential for stability increase in memories with high stability
• Toxic memory - persistent memory that leads to anxiety
• Two-component model of long-term memory - model of memory based on retrievability and stability of memories
• Two-process model of sleep regulation - model that explains why and when we fall asleep
• Unschooling - learning without the pressure of the curriculum
• Variable reward - intermittent reward that underlies gambling
• War of the networks - contradictory signaling that may lead to the impairment in neural control