A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Queen Margaret University

people learn more successfully if they are prevented from making and
reinforcing their own errors (Fillingham, Hodgson, Sage and Lambon Ralph,
2003) and therefore incorrect memory traces are not laid down. This approach
was first used with animal learning studies where pigeons learned red-green
visual discrimination using this method (Fillingham et al. 2003). The success of
errorless learning was compared to errorful learning (where participants were
encouraged to guess the correct answer/ procedure) in a number of studies and
in all cases errorless learning was demonstrated to be more successful than
errorful learning (Lorenzi and Taussik, 2000; Clare, Wilson, Breen and Hodges,
1999; Evans, Wilson, Schuri, Andrade, Baddeley, Bruna, Canavan, Della Sala,
Green, Laaksonen, Baddeley and Wilson, 1994). This approach was used to
successfully rehabilitate people with memory impairments in skills such as
learning to perform word-processing skills (Hunkin, Squires, Aldrich and Parkin,
1998) and programming an electric organiser (Evans et al., 1998) where training
incorporating ‘errorless learning’ led to a more effective acquisition of new skills.
Robertson (1999) asserts that crucial to the efficient use of the brain’s systems
we should study in a fashion that minimises guessing and maximises trials
where there is a strong chance of achieving the correct answer.
2.9.3 Method for recording and evaluating new learning
As discussion of previous learning studies demonstrates, there has been much
variability in the methods used to evaluate the learning of new information (see
section 2.8.6). There are many dimensions to knowing a word and many
degrees of knowledge (Laufer and Nation, 1999); therefore in order to facilitate
the demonstration of new vocabulary learning and to provide an appropriate
method of recording participant performance a suitable model needed to be
identified. The model had to enable the evaluation of language difficulties of
participants to assess the severity of the aphasia; support the provision of a
baseline measure of learning to enable a comparison between pre- and posttraining
knowledge; support the methodology for facilitation of learning the new
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