Psychology of Learning and Motivation 

About: Psychology of Learning and Motivation is an academic journal published by Elsevier BV. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Cognition & Categorization. It has an ISSN identifier of 0079-7421. Over the lifetime, 514 publications have been published receiving 53762 citations.

Human memory ; A proposed system and its control processes

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter presents a general theoretical framework of human memory and describes the results of a number of experiments designed to test specific models that can be derived from the overall theory. This general theoretical framework categorizes the memory system along two major dimensions. The first categorization distinguishes permanent, structural features of the system from control processes that can be readily modified or reprogrammed at the will of the subject. The second categorization divides memory into three structural components: the sensory register, the short-term store, and the long-term store. Incoming sensory information first enters the sensory register, where it resides for a very brief period of time, then decays and is lost. The short-term store is the subject's working memory; it receives selected inputs from the sensory register and also from long-term store. The chapter also discusses the control processes associated with the sensory register. The term control process refers to those processes that are not permanent features of memory, but are instead transient phenomena under the control of the subject; their appearance depends on several factors such as instructional set, the experimental task, and the past history of the subject.

Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the theoretical and empirical literature that addresses aging and discourse comprehension. A series of five studies guided by a particular working memory viewpoint regarding the formation of inferences during discourse processing is described in the chapter. Compensatory strategies may be used with different degrees of likelihood across the life span largely as a function of efficiency with which inhibitory mechanisms function because these largely determine the facility with which memory can be searched. The consequences for discourse comprehension in particular may be profound because the establishment of a coherent representation of a message hinges on the timely retrieval of information necessary to establish coreference among certain critical ideas. Discourse comprehension is an ideal domain for assessing limited capacity frameworks because most models of discourse processing assume that multiple components, demanding substantially different levels of cognitive resources, are involved. For example, access to a lexical representation from either a visual array or an auditory message is virtually capacity free.

Catastrophic interference in connectionist networks: the sequential learning problem

Abstract: Publisher Summary Connectionist networks in which information is stored in weights on connections among simple processing units have attracted considerable interest in cognitive science. Much of the interest centers around two characteristics of these networks. First, the weights on connections between units need not be prewired by the model builder but rather may be established through training in which items to be learned are presented repeatedly to the network and the connection weights are adjusted in small increments according to a learning algorithm. Second, the networks may represent information in a distributed fashion. This chapter discusses the catastrophic interference in connectionist networks. Distributed representations established through the application of learning algorithms have several properties that are claimed to be desirable from the standpoint of modeling human cognition. These properties include content-addressable memory and so-called automatic generalization in which a network trained on a set of items responds correctly to other untrained items within the same domain. New learning may interfere catastrophically with old learning when networks are trained sequentially. The analysis of the causes of interference implies that at least some interference will occur whenever new learning may alter weights involved in representing old learning, and the simulation results demonstrate only that interference is catastrophic in some specific networks.

Metamemory: A Theoretical Framework and New Findings

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on research program, providing a description of a theoretical framework that has evolved out of metamemory research, followed by a few remarks about the methodology. Research in metamemory is initiated by the paradoxical findings that people can accurately predict their subsequent likelihood of recognizing nonrecallable items and that they can quickly and accurately decide-on the basis of no more than a cursory search through memory-that they will not retrieve particular sought after items. Those findings lead to develop a methodology based on psychophysical methods that are used to empirically investigate people's feeling of knowing. The results of the experiments convinced that for dealing with only a part of a complex metacognitive system and to account adequately for feeling-of-knowing phenomena, a larger perspective was needed. This eventuated in the present theoretical framework that emphasizes the role of control and monitoring processes. The embedding of the feeling of knowing in a richer framework helped to dissipate the paradoxical nature of the feeling of knowing. The chapter discusses that today there are many capable, active investigators and a wealth of solid empirical findings.

Executive Attention, Working Memory Capacity, and a Two-Factor Theory of Cognitive Control.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the nature of working memory capacity (WMC), and addresses the nature of WMC limitations, their effects on higher order cognitive tasks, their relationship to attention control and general fluid intelligence, and their neurological substrates. Much of work explores these issues in the context of individual differences in WMC and the cause of those individual differences. Measures of WMC are highly reliable and highly valid indicators of some construct of clear relevance to feral cognition. Macroanalytic studies have demonstrated that the construct reflected by WMC tasks has a strong relationship with gF above and beyond what these tasks share with simple span tasks. The conflict might also arise from stimulus representations of competing strength. This two-factor model fits with current thinking about the role of two brain structures: the prefrontal cortex as important to the maintenance of information in an active and easily accessible state and the anterior cingulate as important to the detection and resolution of conflict.