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Multiple memory systems describes how memories can be declarative or non-declarative; incentive learning produces one type of non-declarative memory. Patients with bilateral hippocampal damage have declarative memory deficits (amnesia) but intact non-declarative memory; patients with striatal dysfunction, for example, Parkinson’s patients who lose striatal dopamine have impaired incentive learning but intact declarative memory. Rats with lesions of the fornix (hippocampal output pathway), but not lesions of the dorsal striatum, have impaired spatial (declarative) memory; rats with lesions of the dorsal striatum, but not fornix, have impaired stimulus–response memory that relies heavily on incentive learning. These memory systems possibly inhibit one another to control responding: in rats, a group that received fornix lesions and had impaired spatial learning did better on an incentive task; in humans, hippocampus damage was associated with improvement on an incentive learning task and striatal damage was associated with increased involvement of the hippocampus in a route-recognition task.

To offer prospective learners information that yields high net benefits, it is important to understand what they already know. How do educators learn about others’ knowledge? Surveys are a common source of information. In part II of this book, I focus on these surveys and how many different kinds of educators use them. My goal throughout part II is to improve educators’ measures and understanding of what people do and do not know about politics. Better measurement and more accurate inferences from data can help educators more effectively diagnose whether individuals have the knowledge they need to achieve desired competences. Where faulty diagnoses can lead educators to offer information that prospective learners neither want nor need, improved diagnoses can help educators identify information that can help others make more competent decisions. The way that we will achieve the improvements just described is by examining survey-based research and political commentary on a concept that many people call “political knowledge.” The best-known academic book on political knowledge defines it as “the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory.” The survey questions that are most relevant for this purpose are recall questions. Recall questions are designed to measure whether or not a person has selected declarative memories. “Who is the Vice President of the United States?” is an example of a commonly asked recall question. Interpretations of responses to recall questions are the evidentiary basis for thousands of books and articles on political knowledge and ignorance. If these data accurately measure what people know, and if analysts accurately interpret the data, then educators can use the interpretations to compare what an audience knows to necessary and sufficient conditions for competence at a given task. Part II’s main tension is that not all data and interpretations are accurate. Some survey data are inaccurate, as happens when a survey organization records a survey participant’s response incorrectly. Similarly, some interpretations of survey data are inaccurate, as happens when an analyst uses a survey to make a claim about ignorance that is inconsistent with the survey’s actual content.

This chapter defines three terms: information, knowledge, competence, and their relationships to one another. Here is a list of the chapter’s main lessons: . . . Information, knowledge, and competence are not one and the same. Understanding their differences is a key to increasing knowledge and competence. Information is what educators can convey to others directly. The same is not true for knowledge or competence. Knowledge is memories of how concepts and objects are related to one another. Knowledge requires information. Conveying information is the means by which educators can increase others’ knowledge. Competence is the ability to perform a task in a particular way. Competence requires knowledge. An educator’s information can increase an audience’s competence only if the audience thinks about the information in ways that transform it into applicable types of knowledge. Educators can achieve their objectives more effectively and efficiently by understanding what kinds of information are most relevant to increasing specific competences. . . . Below, I begin with a brief discussion of the three terms: knowledge, information, and competence in that order. The reason for this ordering comes from my experience with educators and hearing their descriptions of what they are trying to accomplish. Of all the educators that I have met, many more describe themselves as seeking to increase others’ knowledge, rather than increasing their information or competence. So, to convey the information in a manner that is most directly related to how many educators see their own challenges, I start where they start. But there’s a catch. By the end of this chapter, I hope to convince you that two things are true for most educators. First, offering information is their sole means for increasing knowledge. Second, increasing others’ knowledge has limited value unless that knowledge can increase a valuable competence. In other words, for many educators, increasing others’ knowledge is a means for achieving competence goals, rather than being the main goal itself. Hence, one of the most important things that educators can know about information and knowledge is how they relate to competence.