Partial Reinforcement

If you reinforce a behavior freqently, the behavior will go away as soon as you stop reinforcing it. But if you reinforce the behavior intermittently, the behavior will stick around independent of the stimulus (Bloom, Psych).

This reminds me of spaced-repitition, where the idea is that information reinforced at irregular intervals, with increased time between each interval, sticks in the mind better than if the information were shown at the same interval forever.

That said, it doesn't seem likely that if you looked at the same piece of information every single day for a year, you'd instantly forget it as soon as you stopped looking at it.

So maybe these things are totally unrelated. Still, memory plays some role in both, right?

It also reminds of weaning. With traditional reinforcement, the behavior depends on the stimulus for survival, so to speak. Draw an analogy with overprotected children where the child is the behavior and the mother is the reinforcement. If the mother is always there, the child never learns how to take care of itself. Likewise with codependent relationships.

And with spaced repitition, it is kind of like you "wean" yourself off of the flashcards.