Effect of small cue–response separation on pattern discrimination in macaques (Macaca fuscata and M. mulatta).

Three studies with 17 macaque and 6 rhesus monkeys examined the effect of small cue–response separations on Ss' pattern discriminations. When training on a pattern discrimination with a cue–response separation was discontinued during performance at the chance level, there was no saving on the rate of learning a 2nd task (with identical cues but a different cue–response separation) relative to the performance of naive control Ss. By contrast, when training was discontinued at a performance level a little better than chance, there was significant saving on learning a 2nd task. After learning the 2nd task, a 3rd task with new pattern cues was learned, with marked saving on the duration of performance at the chance level. Results indicate that during the initial stage of performance at the chance level, monkeys do not attend to cues if there is even a small separation between the cue and the response site. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When cues collide: Use of stress and statistical cues to word boundaries by 7- to 9-month-old infants.

Prior research suggests that stress cues are particularly important for English-hearing infants' detection of word boundaries. It is unclear, though, how infants learn to attend to stress as a cue to word segmentation. This series of experiments was designed to explore infants' attention to conflicting cues at different ages. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings: When stress and statistical cues indicated different word boundaries, 9-month-old infants used syllable stress as a cue to segmentation while ignoring statistical cues. However, in Experiment 2, 7-month-old infants attended more to statistical cues than to stress cues. These results raise the possibility that infants use their statistical learning abilities to locate words in speech and use those words to discover the regular pattern of stress cues in English. Infants at different ages may deploy different segmentation strategies as a function of their current linguistic experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inescapable shock and attention to internal versus external cues in a water discrimination escape task.

In these experiments we examined discrimination learning in a water escape task following exposure to escapable, yoked inescapable, or no electric shock. Inescapable shock did not have an effect on swim speeds in any of the experiments. Inescapable shock interfered with the acquisition of a position (left–right) discrimination when an irrelevant brightness cue (black and white stimuli) was present. However, inescapable shock did not affect the acquisition of the position discrimination when the irrelevant brightness cue was removed. Inescapably shocked Subjects showed facilitated learning relative to escapably shocked and nonshocked subjects when the brightness cue was included as a relevant cue. These data may resolve discrepancies between studies that did, and did not, find inescapable shock to interfere with the acquisition of discriminations. Moreover, they point to attentional processes as one locus of the cognitive changes produced by inescapable shock and suggest the exposure to inescapable shock biases attention away from "internal" response-related cues toward "external" cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of blocking on overt attention and associability in human learning.

Previous studies have demonstrated a retardation in the rate of novel learning about previously blocked cues as compared to appropriate control cues. We report an experiment investigating whether this retardation in novel learning about a blocked cue is accompanied by a reduction in attention to this cue, as anticipated by attentional theories of associative learning. Consistent with these theories, eye gaze measures revealed a reduction in overt attention to the blocked cue both during the compound training phase of the blocking procedure, and also during novel learning with respect to new outcomes. Moreover, the extent of the bias in overt attention away from blocked cues was positively correlated with the subsequent reduction in rate of novel learning about these cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the uniqueness of attentional capture by uninformative gaze cues: Facilitation interacts with the Simon effect and is rarely followed by IOR.

Orienting to an uninformative peripheral cue is characterized by a brief facilitation followed by a long-lasting inhibition once attention is removed from the cued location. Although central gaze cues cause reflexive orienting, the inhibitory effect that is relatively ubiquitous following exogenous orienting to uninformative peripheral cues has been relatively rare. We hypothesized that IOR might be seen following gaze-induced orienting if attention were effectively returned to centre by a return gaze or return flash. The timecourse of gaze-directed orienting was measured by varying the interval between the gaze cue and a peripheral target requiring an orientation discrimination (permitting measurement of the Simon effect). Significant facilitation was observed at all but the longest SOA tested, 2,880 ms, by which time the facilitation had disappeared with no evidence of IOR. Gaze-induced cuing (which was unaffected by return cue condition) interacted with the Simon effect, decreasing it at the gazed-at location, a pattern that is not seen with more typical endogenous and exogenous cuing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rats with hippocampal lesions learn about allocentric place cues in a non-navigational task.

Hippocampal-lesioned rats (HPC) and sham controls (SH) learned constant-negative visual discriminations among scenes in a Y-maze. Any arm could be start arm for a trial. Two choice scenes ("constant" and "variable") were shown in the other arms. In Experiment 1, each problem had 2 constants. One or the other constant appeared on every trial, and the variable changed every trial; choosing the variable was rewarded. There were 4 problem types. Each constant might be always in a given direction from the start arm (added egocentric [Ego] cue), always in a given maze arm (added allocentric [Allo] cue), both, or neither. SH rats' visual learning was enhanced by Ego and by Allo cues. HPC rats' visual learning was enhanced by Ego cues, and by Allo cues, but only if there was no Ego cue. Experiment 2 confirmed that Allo cues helped HPC rats as much as SH, in the absence of Ego cues. Rats with HPC lesions can learn about allocentric place cues when navigation and idiothetic cue control are not required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multidimensional psychophysics and selective attention in animals.

Notes that the hypothesis that animals selectively attend developed mainly in explanations of certain conditioning and discrimination learning phenomena. This hypothesis of selective attention is evaluated against a continuity (nonattentional) theory, and most, if not all, facts of simple learning can be accounted for by a nonattentional analysis. Thus, the usefulness of selective attention as an explanatory notion remains in doubt, and few phenomena can be regarded as exemplars of selective attention. In contrast, many examples of selective attention phenomena have been discovered in human information processing experiments. Emphasis in these experiments is on instructional and stimulus variables as they affect steady-state performance rather than response learning. Recent research with animals, modeled on human steady-state tasks, promises to provide similar instances of selective attention effects in performance. (2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Olfactory associative learning in Caenorhabditis elegans is impaired in lrn-1 and lrn-2 mutants.

The C. elegans mutants, lrn-1 and lrn-2, are impaired in associative learning using conditioned taste cues. Both mutants are defective in associative learning about appetitive and aversive events, indicating that lrn-1 and lrn-2 exert effects across motivational boundaries. In a new olfactory associative learning paradigm, in which wild type worms learn to avoid a previously attractive diacetyl odor after it has been paired with an aversive acetic acid solution, lrn-1 and lrn-2 are impaired. Although defective in associative learning using a conditioned olfactory cue, nonassociative learning (habituation and dishabituation) using this same olfactory cue is unaffected. The discovery that lrn-1 and lrn-2 are defective in associative learning with both taste and olfactory cues may suggest that associative learning in different sensory modalities converges on a common genetic pathway in C. elegans that is subserved by lrn-1 and lrn-2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Double dissociation of fornix and caudate nucleus lesions on acquisition of two water maze tasks: Further evidence for multiple memory systems.

Examined the effect of lesions of the caudate nucleus or fimbria-fornix on the acquisition of 2 water maze tasks. In both tasks, 2 rubber balls with different visual patterns were used as cues. The correct cue was attached to a submerged rectangular platform and could be mounted by an animal to escape the water. The incorrect cue was attached to a thin round pedestal and could not be mounted. In a spatial version of the task, the correct cue was located in the same quadrant of the maze on all trials, whereas the visual pattern on the cue was varied from trial to trial. Lesions of the fornix, but not the caudate nucleus, impaired acquisition of this spatial task in relation to control animals. In a simultaneous visual discrimination version of the task, the correct cue on all trials was one with a specific visual pattern, and the spatial location of the correct cue was varied from trial to trial. Lesions of the caudate nucleus, but not the fornix, impaired acquisition of this visual discrimination task in relation to control animals. The double dissociation observed supports the hypothesis that the hippocampus and caudate nucleus are parts of systems that differ in the type of memory they mediate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The generality of the effects of cue structure similarity on cue discrimination and recall.

Investigated the effect of cue similarity on associative learning, recall, and cue discrimination in 5 experiments involving a total of 634 undergraduates as Ss. In all experiments, cues consisted of 3 elements shared with other cues. Position and consistency of these elements varied among different conditions. In each experiment, Ss associated some kind of target information with a meaningless string of consonants or meaningful words. The procedures for acquisition included (1) single vs multiple study presentations, (2) a long mixed list containing various structures, (3) incidental learning involving semantic processing of cues and targets, (4) use of sentences containing both cues and targets, and (5) embedding cues and targets in a story. Results show that shared elements produced interference with all procedures and materials. (French abstract) (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention in human associative learning and recognition memory.

Four experiments examined the role of selective attention in a new causal judgment task that allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, blocking was observed; pretraining with 1 cue (A) resulted in reduced learning about a 2nd cue (B) when those 2 cues were trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant Cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training. This is consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated toward the more predictive Cue A, and away from the less predictive Cue B (e.g., N. J. Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants demonstrated poorer recognition for the most predictive cues, relative to control cues. A new model, which is based on N. J. Mackintosh's (1975) model, is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about, and later recognized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model of probabilistic category learning.

A new connectionist model (named RASHNL) accounts for many "irrational" phenomena found in nonmetric multiple-cue probability learning, wherein people learn to utilize a number of discrete-valued cues that are partially valid indicators of categorical outcomes. Phenomena accounted for include cue competition, effects of cue salience, utilization of configural information, decreased learning when information is introduced after a delay, and effects of base rates. Exps 1 and 2 replicate previous experiments on cue competition and cue salience, and fits of the model provide parameter values for making qualitatively correct predictions for many other situations. The model also makes 2 new predictions, confirmed in Exps 3 and 4. The model formalizes 3 explanatory principles: rapidly shifting attention with learned shifts, decreasing learning rates, and graded similarity in exemplar representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A new component of visual orienting: Implicit effects of peripheral information and subthreshold cues on covert attention.

Four experiments examined effects of peripheral cue stimuli on covert spatial attention. In Experiment 1 target stimuli were preceded by a pair of bilaterally presented cue letters. The relative location of the cues predicted target location (left or right), but participants were not informed of this. After a brief practice period, visual orienting was influenced by the letter cues. This implicit peripheral cuing effect was unrelated to participants' awareness of the cue-target relationship. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that visual orienting may occur independently of both perceptual awareness of the peripheral cue event itself and contingency awareness concerning the cue–target relation. Experiment 4 demonstrated that implicit peripheral cuing is qualitatively distinct from voluntary orienting. These findings are discussed in relation to work on spatial attention, implicit learning, and perception without awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning and limits of use of eye gaze by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in an object-choice task.

The ability of 3 capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) to use experimenter-given cues to solve an object-choice task was assessed. The monkeys learned to use explicit gestural and postural cues and then progressed to using eye-gaze-only cues to solve the task, that is, to choose the baited 1 of 2 objects and thus obtain a food reward. Increasing cue-stimulus distance and introducing movement of the eyes impeded the establishment of effective eye-gaze reading. One monkey showed positive but imperfect transfer of use of eye gaze when a novel experimenter presented the cue. When head and eye orientation cues were presented simultaneously and in conflict, the monkeys showed greater responsiveness to head orientation cues. The results show that capuchin monkeys can learn to use eye gaze as a discriminative cue, but there was no evidence for any underlying awareness of eye gaze as a cue to direction of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition of avoidance dispositions by social learning.

In line with the experiments on social learning in animals by imitation, this experiment sought to determine whether rats could learn to respond to the non-behavioral cues of other rats. The "cue" was to hear the squeal of another rat in a painful (shock) situation. When the squeal of the rat was paired with shocking the S a CR could be elicited; not so without shock. Rats also responded differentially to the cue whether in a black or white alley, or whether they were or were not permitted to escape. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4EK12M. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disengaging attention: On the locus of the cue-duration effect in partial report.

Increasing cue duration impairs performance in bar-probe partial report when cues are presented peripherally, but not centrally (P. Dixon, R. Gordon, A. Leung, & V. Di Lollo, 1997). Three experiments examined whether this cue-duration effect reflects processes of exogenous attention. The effect of cue duration on partial report performance with peripheral, but not central, cues was replicated (Experiment 1). Further experiments manipulated the degree that exogenous versus endogenous modes of selection were favored and found that the cue-duration effect for peripheral cues was reduced (1) when blocks contained a high proportion of central cues (Experiment 2) and (2) when the color of the cue indicated the location of the target (Experiment 3). These findings challenge the view that the cue-duration effect is restricted to exogenous attention and are discussed in terms of the process of disengaging attention from the cue to reallocate attention to the target representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictive and diagnostic learning within causal models: Asymmetries in cue competition.

Several researchers have recently claimed that higher order types of learning, such as categorization and causal induction, can be reduced to lower order associative learning. These claims are based in part on reports of cue competition in higher order learning, apparently analogous to blocking in classical conditioning. Three experiments are reported in which Ss had to learn to respond on the basis of cues that were defined either as possible causes of a common effect (predictive learning) or as possible effects of a common cause (diagnostic learning). The results indicate that diagnostic and predictive reasoning, far from being identical as predicted by associationistic models, are not even symmetrical. Although cue competition occurs among multiple possible causes during predictive learning, multiple possible effects need not compete during diagnostic learning. The results favor a causal-model theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of Position and Feature Cues in Discrimination Learning by the Whiptail Lizard (Cnemidophorus inornatus).

Animals use a variety of cue types to locate and discriminate objects. The ease with which particular cue types are learned varies across species and context. An enormous literature contains comparisons of spatial cue use to use of other cue types, but few experiments examine the ease with which various nonspatial cues are learned. In addition, few studies have examined cue use in reptiles. Thus, the authors compared whiptail lizards' (Cnemidophorus inornatus) ability to learn and reverse a discrimination using either position (left or right) or visual feature cues. Lizards learned and reversed the task using position cues faster and with greater accuracy than using feature cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrimination learning during the first year: Stimulus and positional cues.

In four studies, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old human infants were tested in a discrimination learning task in which visual fixation to a particular stimulus or lateral position was reinforced with an auditory stimulus. In Experiment 1, all age groups exhibited acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement of fixation to the reinforced target or position. Experiment 2 revealed that 3-month-olds retained the positional discrimination but not the stimulus discrimination after a 5-min delay between acquisition and extinction; older infants retained both types of discriminations. In Experiments 3 and 4 we investigated a possible developmental shift in the dominance of positional versus stimulus cues by training infants on displays in which stimulus and position were confounded and then by dissociating the cues on test trials. Results from both experiments indicated positional cue dominance for young infants and stimulus cue dominance for older infants. The findings are discussed in terms of differences in the attentional demands elicited by proprioceptive versus exteroceptive cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visuospatial attention is guided by both the symbolic value and the spatial proximity of selected arrows.

There is considerable evidence that overlearned symbols, especially arrows, can orient attention to peripheral locations. In 2003, Pratt and Hommel showed that when 1 arrow is selected from a set of arrows, based on an attentional control setting for a specific target color, the selected arrow determines the orientation of attention. Recently, Leblanc and Jolicoeur (2010) reexamined this finding, and concluded that spatial proximity of the arrow to the target, not the symbolic value of the arrow, determines the orienting of attention. Here, we manipulated both the symbolic value of the cue (direction arrows or directionless circles) and the proximity of the cue to the peripheral target location (near or far), and found that although proximity does play a role in the orienting of attention (larger cuing effects were found with far cues than near cues), the symbolic content of the cue also plays an important role (larger cuing effects were found with arrows than circles). Thus, both the symbolic value and the spatial proximity of cues affect the orienting of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)