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Cumulative Learning

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Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning

Synonyms

Incremental learning; Layered learning

Definition

Intelligent systems, human or artificial, accumulate knowledge and abilities that serve as building blocks for subsequent cognitive development. Cumulative learning (CL) deals with the gradual development of knowledge and skills that improve over time. In both educational psychology and artificial intelligence, such layered or sequential learning is considered to be an essential cognitive capacity, both in acquiring useful aggregations and abstractions that are conducive to intelligent behavior and in producing new foundations for further cognitive development. The primary benefit of CL is that it consolidates the knowledge one has obtained through the experiences, allowing it to be reproduced and exploited for subsequent learning situations through cumulative interaction between prior knowledge and new information.

Theoretical Background

In cognitive and educational psychology, it has been widely stated and often implicitly...

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Correspondence to JungMi Lee .

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Lee, J. (2012). Cumulative Learning. In: Seel, N.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_1660

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_1660

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