Learning the Value of a New Currency From Prices.

In European countries, field studies investigate how citizens acquire knowledge of the new currency, the euro. In 3 laboratory experiments, the authors recruited 168 undergraduates to examine whether such accurate knowledge is acquired from learning prices in the new currency. The results show fast learning of prices of duration of cellular phone calls (quantity) when the prices were proportional to quantity. Inferences of call duration from given prices were likewise found to be accurate. Lower accuracy was however observed for one-to-many mappings of quantity on price and the inverse one-to-many mappings of price on quantity. Price variation may be an important reason for the difficulty in learning the value of the new currency observed in field studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context cues as mediators: II. Four-stage paradigms.

Tested the effect of colors as context cues acting as mediators using 90 undergraduates. The mediation paradigms were 4-stage stimulus equivalence, response equivalence, and chaining. The results provide equivocal support for a mediation hypothesis. The present results are compared with those of a previous investigation of 3-stage paradigms, which suggested that context cues could function as mediators. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional adaptation for self-managed learning systems.

Strategies for adapting instructional support and learning incentives were applied separately and in combination to a lesson on mathematical rules. Adaptations were based on individual students' pretest scores such that the lower the score, the greater the rule support and incentive value. 105 undergraduates participated, and an additional 41 from the same course served as a norming group for the validation of measures. On dependent measures of retention and learning efficiency (posttest/time), adaptation of support improved performance significantly when compared with standard support. Incentive effects, however, were not reliable. An additional comparison strategy, which intentionally mismatched allocations of incentives and instructional support, yielded the lowest performances of all treatments. The results, overall, provide support for the "achievement–treatment interaction" hypothesis and suggest the practical advantages for adapting instructional support to students in self-managed learning systems. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of divided attention on memory for items and their context.

Examined differences between item and context memory using divided attention at encoding and retrieval. Ss, in 3 experiments, were presented with word lists and were instructed to learn the items (i.e., words), the intrinsic context (i.e., the color of the cards on which each word was presented), and the extrinsic context (i.e., the temporal order of the words). In Exp 1 24 undergraduates (aged 20–32 yrs) participated in a digit-monitoring and memory tasks. In Exp 2 the authors examined the effect of divided attention at retrieval using 24 undergraduates (aged 18–29 yrs). In Exp 3 the authors examined memory performance when divided attention was employed at encoding on all lists, and attentional load was manipulated at retrieval using 24 undergraduates (aged 19–32 yrs). Among young adults, in comparison to conditions of full attention, divided attention applied at encoding only or retrieval only resulted in equally lower performance on all memory tasks; in contrast, divided attention applied at both encoding and retrieval resulted in lower performance only on memory for temporal order. The findings support the idea that memory for temporal order requires greater attentional resources and strategic processing than memory for items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concreteness of relational effects on recall of adjective–noun pairs.

Studied the effects of concreteness and relatedness of adjective–noun pairs on free recall, cued recall, and memory integration. The authors report on 2 experiments in which Ss read phrases or sentences containing adjective–noun pairs that vary in rated concreteness and intrapair relatedness. In Exp 1 normative ratings on imagery and relatedness were provided by 23 graduate and 20 undergraduate students. 64 undergraduates participated in the memory experiment. Exp 2 extended Exp 1 by using complete sentences rather than adjective–noun word pairs. 72 undergraduates volunteered to participate in the memory experiment and a separate group of 14 volunteered to participate in a sentence rating task. Consistent with predictions from dual coding theory and prior results with noun–noun pairs, both experiments showed that the effects of concreteness were strong and independent of relatedness in free recall and cued recall. The 2 attributes also had independent (additive) effects on integrative memory as measured by conditionalized free recall of pairs. Integration as measured by the increment from free to cued recall occurred consistently only when pairs were high in both concreteness and relatedness. Relatedness, adjective imagery, and noun imagery ratings, along with word frequencies for adjectives and nouns, and sentences with relatedness ratings are appended. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing through relationship judgments.

To evaluate the effectiveness of instruction fully and to motivate learning, it is important to test students' knowledge of the structural interrelationships that exist among concepts in a domain. Many methods of evaluating structural knowledge are highly subjective, excessively time-consuming to construct and score, or both. The present study describes a method of testing structural knowledge that reduces these problems. Approximately 120 undergraduates completed unit exams consisting of a multiple-choice test over knowledge of individual concepts, an essay test covering relationships among concepts, and a relationship judgments test that required rating the strength of relationships between concepts presented in pairs. Correlations between scores on the tests support the conclusion that relationship-judgment tests provide a valid means of assessing knowledge of both individual concepts and structural knowledge. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for pictures and sounds: Independence of auditory and visual codes.

Examined the mnemonic independence of auditory and visual nonverbal stimuli (pictures, corresponding environmental sounds, or picture-sound pairs) in free recall. In Exp 1 with 169 undergraduates, free recall was tested under 3 learning conditions (standard intentional, intentional with a rehearsal-inhibiting distracter task, or incidental with the distracter task). In all groups, recall was best for the picture-sound items, and appeared to be additive relative to pictures or sounds alone when the distracter task was used. Exp 2 with 76 undergraduates included a group that saw 2 copies of the same picture simultaneously, and a group that saw 2 different pictures of the same concept. Recall in the picture-sound condition was greater than in either single-modality condition. Exp 3 with 24 undergraduates doubled exposure time, resulting in additively higher recall for repeated pictures with different exemplars. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facilitation of perception by spelling constraints.

Conducted 4 experiments in which a total of 42 undergraduates viewed tachistoscopic presentations of a consonant pair and were asked to recall which of 2 or 4 pairs had been presented. Performance was better when the arrangement of letters was constrained in some way than when that constraint was absent (e.g., when the letters K and V could appear together only in 1 order-KV-vs either order, KV or VK). The alternatives were chosen so that knowledge of the constraint would not help the Ss (e.g., KV and VK never appeared together as alternatives). The facilitation effect occurred even when constrained and unconstrained conditions were equated for frequency of letter pairs or of letters occurring in a given position. Effects were found for both order and sequence constraints, and facilitation persisted from day to day. These effects are inconsistent with models of perceptual learning which depend on frequency of exposure. The underlying mechanisms may also facilitate the recognition of words. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Set, structure, and the recall of words.

Presented 40 adjective-noun pairs at the rate of 5 sec/pair to a total of 396 undergraduates in 2 experiments. In both experiments, groups of Ss were given, prior to the initial presentation, (a) either a set to remember the pairs or the nouns; (b) adjectives which were either repeated or varied from the 1st to the 2nd 20 pairs; and (c) pairs which either belonged or did not belong together (e.g., "brave army" vs. "sweet army"). When Ss were given the adjectives and asked to recall the correct nouns, results show that set for pairs, the repeat condition, and the belonging condition provided reliably higher recall scores. Also, the Set * Repeat * Belonging interaction was significant. When Ss were given a blank piece of paper and asked to recall only nouns, only the set for nouns produced higher recall scores. Results support the emphasis-congruence hypothesis in recall, i.e., when the material emphasized in learning is congruent with what is needed in recall, then there is better recall. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of labelling-latency of pictures in associative learning of pictorial representations and their word labels.

Investigated whether the ease of naming pictorial representations facilitates the paired-associate learning of pictures and nouns. The stimuli which consisted of 8 pairs each of picture-pictures, picture-nouns, noun-pictures, and noun-nouns were presented to 46 undergraduates. Within each of these combinations, short- and long-label latencies were manipulated on both sides of the pairs. Pictures were superior to words as stimulus items and words were recalled more easily than pictures as response items. Short latency response items were superior to long latency responses, but no main effect for latency was obtained on the stimulus side. Findings support the conceptual peg hypothesis. Data also indicate that ease of labelling pictures does facilitate associative learning but that this effect is dependent on practice. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conversational comprehension processes are responsible for reasoning fallacies in children as well as adults: If is not the biconditional.

Proposes that children do poorly on reasoning from premises of the form if p then q not because they construe if as a biconditional but rather because they use discourse comprehension processes that lead them to accept the invited inferences if not p then not q and if q then p. This hypothesis predicts that children should respond appropriately to premises in which the invited inferences are countermanded. In Exp I, 24 undergraduates and 44 10-yr-olds were given conditional reasoning problems. Some of these had a major premise consisting of a single if–then sentence, while others had a more elaborate major premise in which the invited inferences were explicitly countermanded. In Exp II, Ss were 24 undergraduates, 20 10-yr-olds, and 34 7-yr-olds. In some problems the major premise consisted of a single if–then statement; in others, the major premise consisted of 3 such statements, 2 of which shared the same consequent, thus implicitly countermanding the invited inferences. In both experiments, all age groups committed the fallacies in the simple condition but not in the more complex condition. It is concluded that children's representation of if distinguishes necessary from merely invited inferences. Data suggest a collection of countermandable context-dependent inferences of varying degrees of invitingness associated with if. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of context on spontaneous trait and situational attributions.

The role of background information in the generation of spontaneous inferences regarding a target's behavior was examined. Ss received background information designed to facilitate dispositional inferences, information to facilitate situational inferences, or no background information. All Ss memorized a series of digit lists. After each list, a short paragraph of background information and a single sentence were presented. Cognitive capacity for processing the paragraphs and sentences was manipulated by presenting either difficult or easy digit lists. Cued recall revealed that dispositional background information facilitated trait inferences but did not affect situational inferences. Similarly, situational information facilitated situational inferences about the actor's behavior but had no impact on trait inferences. The ability of dispositional information to facilitate trait-cued recall was not influenced by Ss' cognitive capacity, whereas situational information boosted situational-cued recall only when Ss enjoyed ample capacity. The relevance of this evidence to the 3-stage model of person perception proposed by D. T. Gilbert, B. W. Pelham, and D. S. Krull (see record 1988-26492-001) is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative strength and word frequency as related to stages of paired-associate learning.

Conducted a study with 240 undergraduates to examine the contribution of response-word frequency and associative strength of paired-associates (PA) on the 2 stages of PA learning. 2 levels of word frequency and 2 associative strength levels were used to form 4 PA lists. 4 study-test trials were provided, with separate groups being given matching or free-recall test trials on either the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th trials, and a conventional PA test on all other trials. Overall PA learning revealed the influence of both variables. Associative strength played a significant role on both the matching and free-recall tests; word frequency, however, did not. Matching trials revealed superior learning to that obtained by free-recall. Results suggest the need for some revision of the 2-stage analysis of PA learning. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processes in implicit personality trait inferences.

The cognitive processes by which people infer whether individuals who possess one trait also possess another were examined in 2 reaction time experiments with a total of 66 undergraduates. Ss took less time to affirm and more time to deny that 2 traits co-occurred, the greater the semantic similarity of the traits. As the amount of recalled evidence required to affirm that 2 traits co-occurred was increased by altering the nature of the co-occurrence statements, true response times increased and false response times decreased. Although it was not possible to determine whether the stored semantic "features" of a trait are locations on meaning dimensions, specific behaviors, known people characterized by the trait, or something else, results strongly suggest that implicit personality inferences result from a 2-stage process in which the 2nd and more detailed memory search stage is entered only if the similarity of the semantic features of the traits falls between 2 task-established decision criteria. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protecting the overall rate of Type I errors for pairwise comparisons with an omnibus test statistic.

Compares 2 procedures for protecting the number of false rejections for a set of all possible pairwise comparisons. The 2-stage strategy of computing pairwise comparisons, conditional on a significant omnibus test, is compared with the multiple comparison strategy that sets a "familywise" critical value directly. The ANOVA test, the Brown and Forsythe test, and the Welch omnibus test, as well as 3 procedures for assessing the significance of pairwise comparisons, are combined into 9 2-stage testing strategies. The data from this study establish that the common strategy of following a significant ANOVA F with Student's t tests on pairs of means results in a substantially inflated rate of Type I error when variances are heterogeneous. Type I error control, however, can be obtained with other 2-stage procedures, and the authors tentatively consider the Welch F″ Welch t″ combination desirable. In addition, the 2 techniques for controlling Type I error do not substantially differ as much as might be expected; some 2-stage procedures are comparable to simultaneous techniques. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Errors as a function of noun concreteness.

Conducted 2 experiments to investigate the effects of stimulus and response noun concreteness in paired-associate learning. In Exp. I, error-success protocols were examined with the aid of a 2-stage Markov model. 64 undergraduates and spouses served as Ss. The 2 stages of the model have been interpreted in terms of storage and retrieval processes. In Exp. II, the production, retrieval, and decoding of mediators were examined. 15 undergraduates served as Ss. The model analysis indicated that the primary effect of noun concreteness, whether manipulated in the stimulus or response terms, was on the retrieval process. The data from Exp. II were consistent with this conclusion, in that concreteness affected the retrieval and decoding of mediators rather than the number of mediators generated. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distributional expectations and the induction of category structure.

Conducted 4 experiments with a total of 84 undergraduates to examine the role of prior expectations on categorical learning from exemplar observation. Ss were presented with category-learning tasks in which the distributions of exemplars defining the categories were varied. In Exps I and II, the distributional form of a category was found to affect speed of learning. Learning was faster when a category's distribution was normal than when it was multimodal. Also, Ss in the early stages of learning a multimodal category responded as if it were unimodal. Results suggest that Ss enter category-learning tasks with expectations of unimodal, possibly normal, distributions of exemplars. Exps III and IV attempted to manipulate Ss' prior expectations by varying the distribution of exemplars in the first of 2 consecutive category-learning tasks. Results show that learning a multimodal category was influenced by the shape of a previously learned distribution and was facilitated when the earlier distribution was either multimodal or skewed, rather than normal. Results are interpreted as support for a dual-process model of category learning that incorporates the effects of prior expectations concerning exemplar distributions. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incidental learning, noun imagery-concreteness and direction of associations in paired-associate learning.

Examined the effect of imagery-concreteness pairs in incidental learning. In Exp. I with 96 undergraduates, intentional learning was superior to incidental learning. Recall of concrete-concrete noun pairs was significantly better than recall of all other pairs, while concrete-abstract and abstract-concrete nouns did not differ from each other but did differ from abstract-abstract recall. In Exp. II with 64 Ss, instructions to use imagery during the orientation task resulted in similar performance for incidental and intentional learning Ss. Concreteness yielded a greater effect on the stimulus side than on the response side of pairs, particularly for stimulus-response recall. Associative directionality had no reliable effects in either experiment. Results are discussed in terms of A. Paivio's conceptual peg hypothesis and 2-process theory of verbal and imaginal memory. (French summary) (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of overtraining on reversal and extradimensional shifts in schizophrenics.

In Exp. I, 50 schizophrenic Ss were trained under 1 of 3 discrimination learning conditions: reversal (R) shift, extradimensional (ED) shift, or control. 1/2 of the Ss in each shift condition received overtraining on the preshift discrimination. Performances of nonovertrained Ss on the R and ED shifts were very similar to performances of schizophrenic Ss tested by J. D. Nolan (see 42:11). Newman-Keuls analyses indicate that overtraining facilitated the R shift relative to the ED shift. The result was a significant overall effect due to shift type. In Exp. II, a replication of Exp. I, 60 undergraduates learned R shifts faster than ED shifts, but overtraining had no discernible effect. Results were compared with those reported by Nolan and were discussed in terms of a 2-stage attention model of discrimination learning. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)