Eighth International School On Mind, Brain And Education
2013 July 30 - August 04
Science Education
in the Digital Era
Directors: Antonio M. Battro, Kurt W. Fischer and Diego Golombek
Program officer: María Lourdes Majdalani
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology RCAST, Tokyo University, Japan
Praise facilitates the human skill formation
In real-life skill acquisition such as trainings on sports or musical instruments, people generally believe that praise for good training performance results in further skill improvements. Indeed, empirical evidence indicates that some types of praise and some circumstances surrounding its delivery enhance skill training performance through an information feedback-incentive mechanism. Furthermore, in a behavioral experiment in human, we demonstrated that praise by others immediately after motor training enhanced skill consolidation which is a post-training memory process essential for long-term retention of the acquired skill. Here, the purpose of my presentation is to summarize previous evidences related to praise-induced skill enhancement, and to discuss the potential neural mechanisms underlying its enhancement.