I often see discussion here of Anki or other Spaced Repetition Systems for learning.  To me, these are great for "higher levels" of knowledge -- things more closely associated with System 2 than System 1.

Are there similar advantages to be had (and systems that exist for) "lower levels" of knowledge?  I think this would apply to things that are implicit learning, intuitions, as well as System-1 level knowledge.

I want to distinguish this from "regular practice", which I don't think has spaced repetition qualities.

  • For example, meditation (to me) includes regular practice in equanimity -- I (so far) don't know of an effect where I can exponentially spread out my meditation practice to make it "last longer"
  • Running is another example, where regular practice makes me better, but I don't feel like I would get much out of exponentially spacing it (I think it could be argued that skill at running is only a small part "knowing" and largely other things like musculature, which would make this a bad example)

I would greatly value contributions of:

  • Studies looking at spaced repetition for intuitions/implicit learning/etc
  • Reasons why these might be possible or exist
  • Reasons why these might be impossible
  • Proposals to how to design experiments to test this
New Answer
New Comment
4 comments, sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 6:06 AM

I want to distinguish this from "regular practice", which I don't think has spaced repetition qualities.

  • For example, meditation (to me) includes regular practice in equanimity -- I (so far) don't know of an effect where I can exponentially spread out my meditation practice to make it "last longer"
  • Running is another example, where regular practice makes me better, but I don't feel like I would get much out of exponentially spacing it (I think it could be argued that skill at running is only a small part "knowing" and largely other things like musculature, which would make this a bad example)

Suppose you come up with some schedule on which to a) meditate, b) run.

Spaced repetition is good for memorization. Ignoring the benefits of successfully sticking to the schedule for remembering to do so, reminders to do that thing could be scheduled a) every day, b) on the days it is scheduled, c) some lesser proportion of time.

Spaced repetition might help for scheduling reminders, so you could 'memorize' remembering to do the thing. Whether it works for doing so, or would only allow you to remember the schedule you came up with if prompted is unclear. You might decide there isn't a cost for scheduling reminders every day/every day you have scheduled to practice, and schedule things that way, because the cost of 'failure to do the thing' exceeds the small cost of reminders.

(If you decided to run every other day, and on the days where you don't run, to meditate, then there is no reminder cost, for reminders every day, in the sense that a reminder everyday will remind you to do something and never be a waste of time.)

I like that question. It seems related to the question of "integration" in psychotherapy. Like when you made a valuable System I / bottom-up experience, how can you support remembering it? One technique I remember is to connect the felt sense with a more symbolic anchor - a gesture, image, sound, bodily position, place, situation, etc. And it sounds like a nice experiment to try "spaced integration" by repeatedly recalling the felt sense through the anchor.