A memory is not a skill… Watching someone cast a spell or make a potion, while helpful, no more makes you a better caster or a potion maker than watching a food network show makes you a better cook. In other words, it would be good for learning history (or apparently arithmancy), marginal to useless for learning charms or transfiguration.
Skills are memories as much as anything else is. Consider the research into experts where much of it is just a large chunk of long-term memory. The question is whether experiencing Pensieve memories is as good as a natural memory.
Skills are partly memories, but memories are not skills. You don’t learn to ride a bike just by watching someone else do it and simply remembering it later (EDIT: though it helps, thanks to mirror neurons). I’d guess that procedural and other implicit memory is not pensievable.
EDIT: while looking stuff up, I came across this fascinating study on off-line memory consolidation.
Skills are partly memories, but memories are not skills. You don’t learn to ride a bike just by watching someone else do it and simply remembering it later
Watching a bike merely forms a particular subset of memories, and does not show that ‘memories are not skills’.
I’d guess that procedural and other implicit memory is not pensievable.
Yes, that rather is the question: how far does the Pensieve go? Is it merely a game-breaker for the kind of declarative knowledge schools spend so much time on, or a game-breaker for pretty much everything they might teach?
Not sure what your point is. If there were a way to use a potion, a spell, a charm or a human sacrifice to master the school curriculum without spending years in Hogwarts, surely there would be some students who did just that.
Procedural memory is “a type of long-term memory and, more specifically, a type of implicit memory.” The term “memory” is too large in scope when you’re basically only meaning episodic memory, if that.
A memory is not a skill… Watching someone cast a spell or make a potion, while helpful, no more makes you a better caster or a potion maker than watching a food network show makes you a better cook. In other words, it would be good for learning history (or apparently arithmancy), marginal to useless for learning charms or transfiguration.
Skills are memories as much as anything else is. Consider the research into experts where much of it is just a large chunk of long-term memory. The question is whether experiencing Pensieve memories is as good as a natural memory.
Skills are partly memories, but memories are not skills. You don’t learn to ride a bike just by watching someone else do it and simply remembering it later (EDIT: though it helps, thanks to mirror neurons). I’d guess that procedural and other implicit memory is not pensievable.
EDIT: while looking stuff up, I came across this fascinating study on off-line memory consolidation.
Watching a bike merely forms a particular subset of memories, and does not show that ‘memories are not skills’.
Yes, that rather is the question: how far does the Pensieve go? Is it merely a game-breaker for the kind of declarative knowledge schools spend so much time on, or a game-breaker for pretty much everything they might teach?
Not sure what your point is. If there were a way to use a potion, a spell, a charm or a human sacrifice to master the school curriculum without spending years in Hogwarts, surely there would be some students who did just that.
Which could be said of the Felix potion as well.
Procedural memory is “a type of long-term memory and, more specifically, a type of implicit memory.” The term “memory” is too large in scope when you’re basically only meaning episodic memory, if that.