A nonverbal organism's knowledge of ordinal position in a serial learning task.

Examined whether a pigeon's representation of a simultaneous chain specifies an element's ordinal position, in 2 experiments using a total of 48 male White Carneaux pigeons. In Exp I, 36 Ss learned to peck 3 simultaneously presented colors (A, B, and C), in the sequence A?→?B?→?C. They then learned to produce 1 of 3 new sequences, each consisting of A, B, or C and 2 achromatic geometric forms, X and Y. Positive transfer occurred when A, B, or C retained its original position in the 2nd sequence (A?→?X?→?Y, X?→?B?→?Y, and X?→?Y?→?C). Negative transfer occurred when A, B, or C was shifted to a new position. Exp II tested an explanation of the transfer effects obtained in the case of element B that is based upon the relative difficulty of sequences containing B, X, and Y rather than knowledge of the ordinal position of B per se. Transfer effects with respect to the ordinal position of B are important because B is the 1 element that is not open to interpretations of beginning or end effects. Exp II showed that the sequence X?→?B?→?Y, in which the difficult-to-discriminate elements X and Y are separated by B, was not easier to learn than the sequences B?→?X?→?Y and X?→?Y?→?B. This result favors the conclusion that while learning to produce a 3-element sequence, a pigeon acquires knowledge of the ordinal position of each element. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress reduces use of negative feedback in a feedback-based learning task.

In contrast to the well-established effects of stress on learning of declarative material, much less is known about stress effects on reward- or feedback-based learning. Differential effects on positive and negative feedback especially have received little attention. The objective of this study, thus, was to investigate effects of psychosocial stress on feedback-based learning with a particular focus on the use of negative and positive feedback during learning. Participants completed a probabilistic selection task in both a stress and a control condition. The task allowed quantification of how much participants relied on positive and negative feedback during learning. Although stress had no effect on general acquisition of the task, results indicate that participants used negative feedback significantly less during learning after stress compared with the control condition. An enhancing effect of stress on use of positive feedback failed to reach significance. These findings suggest that stress acts differentially on the use of positive and negative feedback during learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensory integration in the learning of an aiming task.

Examined the role of dynamic (DVI) and static visual information (SVI) about the moving limb in motor control in an aiming task. 42 undergraduates practiced an oscilloscope aiming task. In a transfer test, the DVI regarding the displacement of the to-be-moved object could be withdrawn without altering the SVI that had been available during the learning of the task. After 200 trials of practice, withdrawing DVI produced a deterioration in the accuracy of Ss' responses. This indicates that the role played by the DVI for aiming control does not diminish with practice. The SVI cues available during movement execution did not appear to play an important role in the movement representation thought to develop through practice. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sleep-dependent learning and practice-dependent deterioration in an orientation discrimination task.

Learning new information requires practice. The degree of learning can be influenced by the amount of practice and whether subjects sleep between sessions. Over-practice, however, can lead to performance deterioration. The interaction between practice-dependent deterioration and sleep-dependent learning needs more study. We examine whether the amount of practice before sleep alters learning, and whether prior sleep protects against deterioration. Two groups (N = 33) were tested three times across two days on an orientation discrimination task. The High practice group was tested twice before a night of sleep and once after, at 9 a.m., 7 p.m., and 9 a.m. The Low practice group was tested once before a night of sleep and twice after, at 7 p.m., 9 a.m., and 7 p.m. Overall, both groups showed (1) deterioration with repeated, within-day testing, (2) performance improvement only after a night of sleep, (3) similar amounts of sleep-dependent learning and practice-dependent deterioration. In summary, we found that sleep resets visual contrast thresholds to a lower baseline (i.e., produces learning), but does not prevent over-practice deterioration effects. Likewise, over-practice deterioration does not influence the magnitude of overnight learning on this task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of self-pacing in an auditory identification learning task.

Investigated a method of pacing in auditory identification learning in an experiment with 127 naval service school students. Traditionally, an instructor paces the learner by controlling the stimulus presentation during learning. The W. N. Dember and R. W. Earl theory and other research suggest that a learner might effectively pace himself, provided he has access to stimuli of appropriate complexity levels. An attempt was made to contrast these 2 positions and a condition in which there was no pacing and all training was on the criterion task. Major results were: (a) self-pacing was less efficient, but not less effective, than proficiency-pacing (traditional); (b) both pacing techniques were more effective than unpaced training on the criterion task; and (c) despite attempts to meet the restrictions of the Dember and Earl theory in designing the self-paced condition, the stimulus selection behavior of Ss in that condition was not mediated by stimulus complexity alone. The applicability of the Dember and Earl theory to complex learning situations is questioned. (French summary) (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Indirect effects of synthetic grammar learning in an identification task.

Two experiments investigated the effects of incidental learning of an artificial grammar on an indirect measure. Ss memorized consonant strings and later identified these in a perceptual clarification procedure. The competitive chunking model by E. Servan-Schreiber and J. R. Anderson (see record 1990-27513-001) predicted faster identifications of grammatical as opposed to nongrammatical strings. Both experiments confirmed this prediction. Exp 2 further investigated whether faster identification induces a feeling of familiarity, which should increase the probability of subjects responding "grammatical" to a string. Faster identifications were indeed related to "old" responses in a recognition judgment. However, there was no systematic relation between speed of identification and grammaticality judgments, which is inconsistent with the prediction of the competitive chunking model that familiarity exclusively mediates grammaticality judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of an operational game as a method of task familiarization.

A method of pretraining which consisted of practice on a highly abstract version of the test task was evaluated by experimental (E) vs. control (C) procedures. 10 Ss were used in each group. The E group received 5 hours practice on the abstract "game," and subsequently both groups received 6 hours training on the test task. The E group's performance was reliably superior to the C group throughout the 6-hour test task period although the difference gradually diminished. It was concluded that positive transfer in complex tasks is based on the practice of verbally mediated, central responses common to both pretraining and test tasks. From Psyc Abstracts 36:05:5CL01K. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationships between psychometric intelligence and learning in an explicit and an implicit task.

An experiment is reported examining the relation of implicit grammar learning and series completion tasks to a standard measure of psychometric intelligence, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS—R; D. Wechsler, 1981). The results replicate and extend an earlier study by A. S. Reber, F. F. Walkenfeld, and R. Hernstadt (see record 1992-04154-001) and provide the following support for the differences between explicit and implicit tasks: (a) The implicit task was less strongly related to Full Scale IQ, and (b) the implicit task appeared to be independent of age. The implicit and explicit tasks exhibited a quite different pattern of relations to the factors known to underlie WAIS—R performance. Although both tasks showed significant links with a Perceptual Organization factor, only the series completion task showed a significant link with the Attention factor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive internal model of intrinsic kinematics involved in learning an aiming task.

The elbowjoint angle and the shoulder joint angle of participants aiming at targets were multiplied in an experiment that used a position-recording system and a cathode-ray tube screen. The linear transformation in joint angles (intrinsic coordinates) corresponded to a nonlinear transformation between the hand coordinates and the screen coordinates (extrinsic coordinates). We examined whether participants could learn this transformation in the intrinsic coordinates or in the extrinsic coordinates by investigating intermanual (between-hands) transfer under an intrinsically consistent condition and an extrinsically consistent condition. Positive intermanual transfer was observed in the former condition but not in the latter condition. Results suggest that participants can learn the linear transformation in joint angles under the intrinsic coordinates and that the central nervous system adaptively represents the intrinsic kinematics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of altering task components on perceptual-motor task learning.

In training operators of man-machine systems, how will altering the task influence learning progress at various stages in this sequence? After trying it out in a pilot study, the main experiment involved 108 male soldiers. "The apparatus consisted of an electronic compensatory tracking device which required S to maintain a target indicator in the center of a 5-in. oscilloscope… . Time on target was the primary measure of performance." A temporary decrement in performance was produced from altering task components later in learning. Greater effect followed from changes taking place earlier. 16 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants use handrails as tools in a locomotor task.

In 2 experiments the authors demonstrated that adaptive locomotion can involve means-ends problem solving. Sixteen-month-old toddlers crossed bridges of varying widths in the presence or absence of a handrail. Babies attempted wider bridges more often than narrow ones, and attempts on narrow bridges depended on handrail presence. Toddlers had longer latencies, examined the bridge and handrail more closely, and modified their gait when bridges were narrow and/or the handrail was unavailable. Infants who explored the bridge and handrail before stepping onto the bridge and devised alternative bridge-crossing strategies were more likely to cross successfully. Results challenge traditional conceptualizations of tools: Babies used the handrail as a means for augmenting balance and for carrying out an otherwise impossible goal-directed task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Application of a cognitive-distance model to learning in a simulated travel task.

A cognitive-distance model for choice, obtained by specializing a general class of models for categorization, was tested in a situation simulating the task of controlling speed of a vehicle in tasks defined by different relations between speed and probability of delay. Subjects exhibited significant learning whenever delay schedules permitted greater-than-chance performance, but on the average they did not approach optimal performance in the sense of choosing speeds so as to maximize distance attained in allowed time. Evidence was obtained that subjects encoded information about probabilities of delay and distributions of distance attained at different speeds quite accurately in memory and that suboptimal performance was due primarily to imperfect discrimination among representations of choice alternatives on a cognitive scale of expected distance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pavlovian to instrumental transfer of control in a human learning task.

Pavlovian learning tasks have been widely used as tools to understand basic cognitive and emotional processes in humans. The present studies investigated one particular task, Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), with human participants in an effort to examine potential cognitive and emotional effects of Pavlovian cues upon instrumentally trained performance. In two experiments, subjects first learned two separate instrumental response-outcome relationships (i.e., R1-O1 and R2-O2) and then were exposed to various stimulus-outcome relationships (i.e., S1-O1, S2-O2, S3-O3, and S4-) before the effects of the Pavlovian stimuli on instrumental responding were assessed during a non-reinforced test. In Experiment 1, instrumental responding was established using a positive-reinforcement procedure, whereas in Experiment 2, a quasi-avoidance learning task was used. In both cases, the Pavlovian stimuli exerted selective control over instrumental responding, whereby S1 and S2 selectively elevated the instrumental response with which it shared an outcome. In addition, in Experiment 2, S3 exerted a nonselective transfer of control effect, whereby both responses were elevated over baseline levels. These data identify two ways, one specific and one general, in which Pavlovian processes can exert control over instrumental responding in human learning paradigms, suggesting that this method may serve as a useful tool in the study of basic cognitive and emotional processes in human learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interdimensional transfer of an ordinal solution strategy.

Asked 6-yr-olds to find non-end members of 4-stimulus ordinal sets. Ss receiving training were trained using either the height or brightness dimension and were tested on the alternate dimension. One group received training with a "point-to-end-member-first" correction procedure. A 2nd group received feedback without that correction procedure. A control group was given the transfer task only. Training with the correction procedure produced transfer scores superior to those of the other treatment groups. Interdimensional transfer of an ordinal solution strategy was shown. The findings suggest that the ability to deal with ordinal relations is available to 6-yr-old Ss and needs only appropriate elicitation conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual experience enhances infants' use of task-relevant information in an action task.

Four experiments examined whether infants' use of task-relevant information in an action task could be facilitated by visual experience in the laboratory. Twelve- but not 9-month-old infants spontaneously used height information and chose an appropriate (taller) cover in search of a hidden tall toy. After watching examples of covering events in a teaching session, 9-month-old infants succeeded in an action task that involved the same event category; learning was not generalized to events from a different category. The present results demonstrate that learning through visual experience can be transferred to infants' subsequent actions. These findings shed light on the link between perception and action in infancy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The use of auditory cues in a visual search task.

Can an operator in a man machine system monitoring an instrument display do it better if he has both auditory and visual cues? 50 college students were assigned randomly to one of 5 conditions tested. A simulated man machine visual display was used for visual search tasks; a headset was used for sound. "In general, it appears that auditory cueing can be used effectively in conjunction with a visual search task." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of generic advance instructions on learning a classification task.

Investigated whether giving students generic advance instructions about how to learn a classification task would be effective in facilitating learning of a specific classification task. The effect of instructions was compared with the effects of adjunct postquestions, simply reading the materials (control group), and both instructions and adjunct postquestions. The experimental task involved learning to classify instances of several different categories. Ss were 72 US Navy enlisted personnel. It was hypothesized that advance instructions to Ss regarding how and what to learn would facilitate learning of classification material. Results show that the instruction group and adjunct questions group did equally well on classifying new and old instances of US Navy call signs. All groups did better than control groups. Results suggest that students can learn a general strategy for processing classification material and that providing students with generic information about how and what to learn is an effective instructional strategy. A text of the instructions used to teach Ss how to learn a classification task is appended. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment of learning in the selection concept-learning task.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of learning in the concept-learning task, especially in the selection mode. Following R. Durling and C. Schick (see record 1976-06149-001), learning is analyzed into 2 components, monitoring and strategy learning, using a technique that avoids the confounding of the Durling and Schick method. 330 undergraduates were tested on 4 repetitions of a selection task. A significant degree of learning was observed on a trials-to-solution measure. A partition of trials revealed that most of the improvement consisted of learning to avoid logical errors. A strategy analysis showed that most Ss consistently employed the same strategy across problems. Strategy shifters displayed a small but significant tendency toward more efficient strategies. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of temporal and ordinal information during serial interception sequence learning.

The expression of expert motor skills typically involves learning to perform a precisely timed sequence of movements. Research examining incidental sequence learning has relied on a perceptually cued task that gives participants exposure to repeating motor sequences but does not require timing of responses for accuracy. In the 1st experiment, a novel perceptual-motor sequence learning task was used, and learning a precisely timed cued sequence of motor actions was shown to occur without explicit instruction. Participants learned a repeating sequence through practice and showed sequence-specific knowledge via a performance decrement when switched to an unfamiliar sequence. In the 2nd experiment, the integration of representation of action order and timing sequence knowledge was examined. When either action order or timing sequence information was selectively disrupted, performance was reduced to levels similar to completely novel sequences. Unlike prior sequence-learning research that has found timing information to be secondary to learning action sequences, when the task demands require accurate action and timing information, an integrated representation of these types of information is acquired. These results provide the first evidence for incidental learning of fully integrated action and timing sequence information in the absence of an independent representation of action order and suggest that this integrative mechanism may play a material role in the acquisition of complex motor skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning.

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: (a) a neutral ({xxx} or {ready}) prime, (b) a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, (c) a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (d) a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (e) a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and (f) a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, (b) no previously studied semantically related primes, and (c) no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no semantically related primes and (b) all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)