Showing papers in "Psychology of Learning and Motivation in 1988"

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.

The Comparator Hypothesis: A Response Rule for The Expression of Associations

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the potential explanatory power of a specific response rule and its implications for models of acquisition. This response rule is called the “comparator hypothesis.” It was originally inspired by Rescorla's contingency theory. Rescorla noted that if the number and frequency of conditioned stimulus–unconditioned stimulus (CS–US) pairings are held constant, unsignaled presentations of the US during training attenuate conditioned responding. This observation complemented the long recognized fact that the delivery of nonreinforced presentations of the CS during training also attenuates conditioned responding. The symmetry of the two findings prompted Rescorla to propose that during training, subjects inferred both the probability of the US in the presence of the CS and the probability of the US in the absence of the CS and they then established a CS–US association based upon a comparison of these quantities. The comparator hypothesis is a qualitative response rule, which, in principle, can complement any model of acquisition.

Associative Accounts of Causality Judgment

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the associative accounts of causality judgment. The perceptual and cognitive approaches to causal attribution can be contrasted with a more venerable tradition of associationism. The only area of psychology that offered an associative account of a process sensitive to causality is that of conditioning. An instrumental or operant conditioning procedure presents a subject with a causal relationship between an action and an outcome, the reinforcer; performing the action either causes the reinforcer to occur under a positive contingency or prevents its occurrence under a negative one, and the subjects demonstrate sensitivity to these causal relationships by adjusting their behavior appropriately. Most of these associative theories are developed to explain classic or Pavlovian conditioning rather than the instrumental or operant variety, but there are good reasons for assuming that the two types of conditioning are mediated by a common learning process.

A Connectionist/Control Architecture for Working Memory

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the architecture of working memory The term “architecture” is used in computer science as a systematic approach to the configuration of computational components to accomplish some information-processing tasks The architecture described in the chapter illustrates both the limitations and capacities of human information processing The chapter also discusses human phenomena that identify the qualitative features of human information processing and exhibit the qualitative features of the architecture of working memory The connectionist/control architecture assumes processing that occurs in a set of modules organized into levels and regions The regions communicate with each other on an inner loop of connections This loop allows information to be transferred among input, output, and other regions A new feature of this architecture is a proposed context-storage module that associates the content of messages in the inner loop with the temporal context The context storage system can reload modules after short-term information decays or is displaced In addition, it provides a means of achieving stable, robust processing under conditions of high workload

Evidence for Relational Selectivity in the Interpretation of Analogy and Metaphor

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter reviews three theoretical approaches to analogy and metaphor in increasing order of the complexity of their representational assumptions. Analogies discard object descriptions and preserve a relational structure. Mere-appearance matches preserve object attributes and discard a relational structure. Literal similarity matches preserve both relational structure and object descriptions. The chapter presents a propositional representation in which nodes or constants represent concepts treated as wholes and explain that predicates, when applied to the nodes, express propositions about the concepts. Structure mapping assumes that the comprehension of metaphors involves the processing of complex representational structures and that the matching process is sensitive to distinctions about a predicate structure. The chapter presents experiments that contrast salience imbalance and structure mapping. Structure mapping and salience imbalance make different predictions about the way people derive the meaning of a metaphor from the prior representations of its terms. People seek interpretations of metaphors that preserve relations from the base and drop object attributes.

Anxiety and the Amygdala: Pharmacological and Anatomical Analysis of the Fear-Potentiated Startle Paradigm

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes the fear-potentiated startle paradigm and the advantages it provides for the pharmacological and neuroanatomical analyses of fear conditioning. It also discusses the pharmacological treatments that block fear-potentiated startle, the neural pathways involved in the startle reflex, and the role of the amygdala in fear-potentiated startle and its possible connections to the startle pathway and critical visual structures that carry information about the conditioned stimulus. The importance of the central nucleus of the amygdala and its efferent projections to several brainstem target areas for fear and anxiety is outlined in the chapter. Drugs can potentially act on afferent or efferent systems of the amygdala or in the amygdala itself; different classes of anxiolytic drugs may block fear or anxiety by acting at different points along the neural pathways involved in fear. While some drugs act by blocking the transmission of a conditioned stimulus to the amygdala, others might block transmission along its efferent pathways.

Strategic control of retrieval strategies.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter highlights the importance of considering the strategic components of memory retrieval when developing a model of memory and question answering. The chapter describes the type of architectural framework that accounts for basic memory phenomena and highlights the importance of assuming a strategy-selection component prior to careful memory search. These arguments are both theoretically and empirically based. The chapter describes the variables that affect strategy selection, presents the possible mechanisms involved in selection, and reviews the generality of these mechanisms for other cognitive tasks. The variables extrinsic to a memory probe that influence strategy selection include prior history of success with a strategy. Other situational variables such as explicit advice about successful strategies, task instructions, and knowledge of the age of the memories tested can also influence this bias in strategy selection. Activation determines the ease of access of information; the more active the information, the easier it is to access.

The Intelligent Hand

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter presents a theoretical perspective of haptic processing of objects. Haptics is a perceptual system incorporating inputs from multiple sensory systems. It includes a cutaneous system that senses pressure and vibration and—although rarely considered when discussing haptics—thermal sensing, which may be of considerable importance for the perception of objects. The term “haptics” is an umbrella that includes all of the sensory subsystems derived from the involvement of the skin, muscles, and joints. Object processing means both the apprehension of the structural and substantive attributes of objects and the categorization of the objects into previously established classes. The chapter discusses two phenomena that have been documented in both laboratory studies and informal demonstrations: (1) haptics is very poor at apprehending spatial-layout information in a two-dimensional plane and (2) haptics is very good at learning about and recognizing three-dimensional objects. The chapter describes the relationship between the exploratory movements of the human hand and the desired knowledge about an object.

Modular Analysis of Timing in Motor Skill

Abstract: Publisher Summary A system that controls time is rather general in its application; it is used not only to control different muscles in the course of motor production but also to judge the durations of perceived events. This system is called a “module.” The discussion of force control and speed is conducted within the framework of analyzing timing because it shows that modules are separable from timing. Two themes of the motor control system are described in the chapter: a general one and a more specific one. The general theme concerns whether the motor control system is composed of independent modules in which each module performs specialized computations. The second more specific theme focuses on the hypothesized existence of a timing module with subsidiary discussion of force control and maximum rate of movement. A modular analysis of skill not only makes use of individual differences as a method for defining modules but may also be instrumental in bolstering the study of individual differences itself.

Successive Approximations to a Model of Human Motor Programming

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes a series of experiments on the cognitive activity that immediately precedes and allows the execution of voluntary actions. Cognitive activity is referred to as “motor programming” and its resultant representations are referred to as “motor programs.” The control of finger sequences is important in keyboard entry and musical performances. Finger sequences can be performed extremely rapidly and can be executed without direct conscious control. The chapter describes the processes of motor programming and the structure of motor programs. The data of interest are the times and identities of produced responses. If the timing of responses within a sequence changes as a function of an alternative sequence, the changes can be attributed to the operations underlying the programming of the sequence to be performed. A corollary of the motor-program editor model is that successive response sequences can be programmed by changing features that distinguish one sequence from the next. This method of programming is more efficient than the one in which each sequence must be programmed from scratch regardless of its relation to the sequence that has just been performed.

Foraging as Operant Behavior and Operant Behavior as Foraging: What Have We Learned?

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter highlights the way psychology can supply mechanistic analyses of foraging and examines the role of particular behavioral mechanisms in particular aspects of foraging. New foraging models have been developed, and psychological data and theory are integral to test models dealing with risk and information. Standard models of prey and patch choice have been refined to take into account constraints on a forager such as imperfect counting, timing, and discrimination. At the same time, new theory and data on timing and choice have encouraged the analysis of foraging behavior at a finer level of detail. The analysis of any specific foraging problem leaves a number of unanswered questions. Apparently, conflicting functional and mechanistic predictions have been tested in the areas of sampling behavior, response to time horizon, and the effects of energy budget on response to risk. A standard model of diet selection prescribes rejecting an unprofitable prey item whenever a forager cannot expect to finish handling it before the next profitable item arrives.

An integrated computational model of stimulus-response compatibility and practice

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter presents a theory of two reaction-time domains: stimulus–response compatibility and practice. This theory consists of two components: (1) a model of task performance, which is based on the concept of goal hierarchies, and (2) a model of learning, which is based on the concept of chunking. The compatibility and practice effects are produced by first constructing models of the way subjects are performing specific experimental tasks and then simulating those models to determine the time required to perform the tasks. The compatibility phenomena arise because of the differences among the task-performance models underlying subject behavior in the different compatibility conditions. The theory is implemented as goal-based production-system architecture called “Xaps3.” Related to both compatibility and practice is the concept of a population stereotype, which was evoked by the early investigators as a major explanation of stimulus–response compatibility. Operationally, population stereotypes are determined by examining the responses subjects tend to make to a stimulus when an experimenter does not specify what is appropriate.

The Experimental Synthesis of Behavior: Reinforcement, Behavioral Stereotypy, and Problem Solving

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the experimental synthesis of behavior. Learning involves the formation of representations that are considerably more abstract than connections between sensory inputs and particular muscle twitches. The units of behavior may be defined functionally in terms of their effects on the environment, and generalizations should be sought relating environmental events such as reinforcement to the occurrences of these functional units. The chapter describes the effects of pretraining variations on the experiments conducted on the behavior of individuals. The pretraining confounds two variables of potential significance. It includes reinforcement and involves a contingency that produces a high degree of stereotypy. The four experiments discussed in the chapter show that a history of reinforcement contingent on particular successful patterns of behavior can have negative transfer effects in later tasks that were substantially different from the pretraining task. The chapter describes the negative effects of rewards. If the application of instructional techniques involving reinforcement contingencies becomes sufficiently widespread, the problematic category of intelligent variation may disappear as a characteristic of human behavior in need of explanation.

Extraction of Information From Complex Visual Stimuli: Memory Performance and Phenomenological Appearance

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses perceptual processes and presents a model of the relation between the perceptual processing of some stimulus and the quality of the stimulus's eventual memory representation. Perceptual processing occurs in conjunction with the conscious awareness of the to-be-encoded stimulus. It is the existence of such awareness that underlies the perceptual/conceptual dichotomy; there must be a raw-information extraction process that can only occur if the stimulus is phenomenologically present. The perceptual processing model encompasses the phenomenological awareness of a visual stimulus. The model is divided in two forms: general and quantitative. The general form is composed of five qualitative assumptions that may correspond to psychological reality. In the quantitative form of the model, two of these qualitative assumptions are replaced with corresponding quantitative forms. The quantitative assumptions are stronger than the qualitative counterparts.