No subject

You might be right that consolidation phenomena support a
claim for memory-based learning. However, your arguments
play too fast and free with a very large literature on 
human memory and learning, which indicate that human
learning is considerably more complex. The following are
some examples.

>One of the fundamental beliefs in neuroscience, cognitive science
>and artificial neural networks is that the brain learns in
>real-time. That is, it learns instantaneously from each and every
>learning example provided to it by adjusting the synaptic
>strengths or connection weights in a network of neurons.

This is wrong.  Consolidation phenomena have been around for a long
time, as has been the assumption that something happens in
the first 5 or so hours after learning to cement what has
been learned.  This has been the traditional explanation of
retrograde amnesia--a trauma to the brain can result in 
loss of memory regarding events that occurred several hours
before the trauma.

>What are the real implications of this study? One of the most
>important facts is that although both groups had identical
>training sessions, they had different levels of learning 
>of the motor task because of what they did subsequent to
>practice. From
>this fact alone one can conclude with some degree of 
>certainty that real-time, instantaneous learning is not
>used for learning motor skills.
.....
>One has to remember that the essence of learning is
>generalization.

These statements are also wrong, or at least too simplistic.  The
existence of consolidation effects (and possibly
memory-based learning) does not rule out the existence of
real-time, instantaneous learning.

There is perhaps a half-century of psychological research on
interference effects in learning that argue for a broader view.
When one experiences an event, the ability to recall the event is
influenced both by what occurs prior to the event (referred to as
proactive interference), and what occurs after it (referred to as
retroactive interference).  Proactive interference effects indicate
that the more familiar you are with a stimulus, the less impact an
encounter with it will have on your memory of the encounter
(see the psychological literature on word-frequency effects
on recognition, repetition effects, lag effects, von
Restorff effects, and proactive inhibition in paired-
associates learning).   Many of these effects occur with
familiarity that is established within the immediately 
prior seconds, minutes, or hours of the experiment, so
some type of instantaneous learning occurs that impacts
longer-term learning.

Retroactive interference effects have been studied most thoroughly
in the paired-associates learning paradigm.  Here, the 
point is that when you learn, you are often learning an
association between a stimulus and a response.  The
paired-associates learning paradigm involves having 
subjects learn a list of stimulus-response pairs,
such that when they are presented with each of the stimuli
in the list, they can retrieve the corresponding response.
Retroactive interference effects occur when, after this
learning, subjects are given a new list, with either the
same or similar stimuli, paired with new responses.  What
typically happens is that, even if the first list is 
learned perfectly, learning the second list interferes with
retrieving the responses from the first list.  These 
results occur over short periods of time, and over longer
periods of time.  Hence, the results from the study you
cite, might possibly be explained as retroactive
interference effects, as well as, or instead of, as
consolidation effects.

>A logical explanation perhaps for the "loss of
>motor skill" phenomenon, as for any other similar phenomenon, is
>that the brain has a limited amount of working or short term
>memory. And when encountering important new information, the brain
>stores it simply by erasing some old information from the working
>memory. And the prior information gets erased from the working
>memory before the brain has the time to transfer it to a more
>permanent or semi-permanent location for actual learning.

The problem here is that short-term memory and working memory have
more precise meanings associated with them.  Basically, 
they refer to what you can pay attention to, or rehearse
internally or externally, at one time.  The capacity is 
very limited, and so you would be continually changing the
contents of short-term memory in working on a single task
like the one you describe.  Thus, for memory-based learning
to occur, there must be some form of instantaneous learning
that keeps the to-be-remembered stimuli around long enough
for consolidation to occur, but this is not what is 
commonly referred to as short-term or working memory.

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