Mathematical Modeling of the Learning Curve

Chapter 2 Mathematical models of the learning curves

2.1 Introduction

The application of mathematical models in the analysis of learning data has a rich tradition in experimental psychology. However, there have been only a few attempts to fit learning curves to data from clinical neuropsychological memory tests [22–24].

Typically, performance for many simple learning paradigms improves with repetition. At that, the increase in performance diminishes with every additional repetition or trial. Thus, the learning curve follows a gradually increasing negatively accelerated trajectory [25]. From a mathematical point of view, such curves can be modeled with any continuous negatively accelerated (convex) monotonous smooth function. Among such functions, ...