Showing papers in "Psychology of Learning and Motivation in 2013"

The self organization of human interaction

Abstract: We describe a “centipede’s dilemma” that faces the sciences of human interaction. Research on human interaction has been involved in extensive theoretical debate, although the vast majority of research tends to focus on a small set of human behaviors, cognitive processes, and interactive contexts. The problem is that naturalistic human interaction must integrate all of these factors simultaneously, and grander theoretical mitigation cannot come only from focused experimental or computational agendas. We look to dynamical systems theory as a framework for thinking about how these multiple behaviors, processes, and contexts can be integrated into a broader account of human interaction. By introducing and utilizing basic concepts of self-organization and synergy, we review empirical work that shows how human interaction is flexible and adaptive and structures itself incrementally during unfolding interactive tasks, such as conversation, or more focused goal-based contexts. We end on acknowledging that dynamical systems accounts are very short on concrete models, and we briefly describe ways that theoretical frameworks could be integrated, rather than endlessly disputed, to achieve some success on the centipede’s dilemma of human interaction.

Perceptual Learning, Cognition, and Expertise

Abstract: Recent research indicates that perceptual learning (PL)—experience-induced changes in the way perceivers extract information—plays a larger role in complex cognitive tasks, including abstract and symbolic domains, than has been understood in theory or implemented in instruction. Here, we describe the involvement of PL in complex cognitive tasks and why these connections, along with contemporary experimental and neuroscientific research in perception, challenge widely held accounts of the relationships among perception, cognition, and learning. We outline three revisions to common assumptions about these relations: 1) Perceptual mechanisms provide complex and abstract descriptions of reality; 2) Perceptual representations are often amodal, not limited to modality-specific sensory features; and 3) Perception is selective. These three properties enable relations between perception and cognition that are both synergistic and dynamic, and they make possible PL processes that adapt information extraction to optimize task performance. While PL is pervasive in natural learning and in expertise, it has largely been neglected in formal instruction. We describe an emerging PL technology that has already produced dramatic learning gains in a variety of academic and professional learning contexts, including mathematics, science, aviation, and medical learning.

List-Method Directed Forgetting in Cognitive and Clinical Research: A Theoretical and Methodological Review

Abstract: The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide an up-to-date review of the twenty-first century research and theory on list-method directed forgetting (DF) and related phenomena like the context-change effect. Many researchers have assumed that DF is diagnostic of inhibition, but we argue for an alternative, noninhibitory account and suggest reinterpretation of earlier findings. We first describe what DF is and the state of the art with regard to measuring the effect. Then, we review recent evidence that brings DF into the family of effects that can be explained by global memory models. The process-based theory we advocate is that the DF impairment arises from mental context change and that the DF benefits emerge mainly but perhaps not exclusively from changes in encoding strategy. We review evidence (some new to this paper) that strongly suggests that DF arises from the engagement of controlled forgetting strategies that are independent of whether people believed the forget cue or not. Then we describe the vast body of literature supporting that forgetting strategies result in contextual change effects, as well as point out some inconsistencies in the DF literature that need to be addressed in future research. Next, we provide evidence—again, some of it new to this chapter—that the reason people show better memory after a forget cue is that they change encoding strategies. In addition to reviewing the basic research with healthy population, we reinterpret the evidence from the literature on certain clinical populations, providing a critique of the work done to date and outlining ways of improving the methodology for the study of DF in special populations. We conclude with a critical discussion of alternative approaches to understanding DF.

Conceptual Composition: The Role of Relational Competition in the Comprehension of Modifier-Noun Phrases and Noun–Noun Compounds

Abstract: Compositionality and productivity, which are the abilities to combining existing concepts and words to create new concepts and phrases, words, and sentences, are hallmarks of the human conceptual and language systems. Combined concepts are formed within the conceptual system and can be expressed via modifier-noun phrases (e.g. purple beans ) and compound words (e.g. snowball ), which are the simplest forms of productivity. Modifier-noun phrases and compound words are often paraphrased using a relation to connect the constituents (e.g. beans that are purple, ball made of snow ). The phrase or compound does not explicitly contain the underlying relation, but the existence of the relation can be shown by manipulating the availability of the relation and observing the effect on the interpretation of the phrase or compound. This chapter describes how novel modifier-noun phrases and established compounds are interpreted. We present a theoretical account of relational interpretation of combined concepts and present the empirical evidence for the use of relational structures. We then present the empirical evidence supporting our theoretical account’s specific predictions about how relational interpretations are selected and evaluated and how the relational interpretation is elaborated to create a fully specified new concept.

Individual Differences in Intelligence and Working Memory: A Review of Latent Variable Models

Abstract: The purpose of the current review is to examine individual differences in intelligence and working memory capacity. The emphasis is on latent variable models and theoretical frameworks that connect interindividual differences in behavior with intraindividual psychological processes. Our review suggests that intelligence and working memory capacity are strongly correlated and that the shared variance is primarily due to the fluid reasoning component of intelligence and mechanisms of cognitive control in working memory. We conclude that research on intelligence and working memory is a rare successful example of the unification of experimental and differential psychology. Finally, we argue that general ability models of intelligence that posit a unitary source of variance are not consistent with contemporary research and should be fairly rejected.

Toward a Unified Theory of Reasoning

Abstract: This article describes a theory that uses mental models to integrate deductive, inductive, and probabilistic reasoning. It spells out the main principles of the theory and illustrates them with examples from various domains. It shows how models underlie inductions, explanations, estimates of probabilities, and informal algorithms. In all these cases, a central principle is that the mind represents each sort of possibility in a separate mental model and infers whatever holds in the resulting set of models. Finally, the article reviews what has been accomplished in implementing the theory in a single large-scale computer program, mReasoner.

Learning Along With Others

Abstract: Unlike how most psychology experiments on learning operate, people learning to do a task typically do so in the context of other people learning to do the same task. In these situations, people take advantage of others’ solutions, and may modify and extend these solutions, thereby affecting the solutions available to others. We are interested in the group patterns that emerge when people can see and imitate the solutions, innovations, and choices of their peers over several rounds. In one series of experiments and computer simulations, we find that there is a systematic relation between the difficulty of a problem search space and the optimal social network for transmitting solutions. As the difficulty of finding optimal solutions in a search space increases, communication networks that preserve spatial neighborhoods perform best. Restricting people’s access to others’ solutions can help the group as a whole find good, hard-to-discover solutions. In other experiments with more complex search spaces, we find evidence for several heuristics governing individuals’ decisions to imitate: imitating prevalent options, imitating options that become increasingly prevalent, imitating high-scoring options, imitating during the early stages of a multiround search process, and imitating solutions similar to one’s own solution. Individuals who imitate tend to perform well, and more surprisingly, individuals also perform well when they are in groups with other individuals who imitate frequently. Taken together, our experiments on collective social learning reveal laboratory equivalents of prevalent social phenomena such as bandwagons, strategy convergence, inefficiencies in the collective coverage of a problem space, social dilemmas in exploration/exploitation, and reciprocal imitation.

Causation, Touch, and the Perception of Force

Abstract: Much of the thinking on causation recognizes that it entails more than spatial–temporal contiguity or correlation, but it has been difficult to specify exactly what that extra component of thought is. In this paper, we argue that the representation of causal relations is based on the feeling of force as understood through the sense of touch. Grounding causation in people’s sense of touch allows us to address the long-standing challenges that have been raised against force-based approaches to causation. In support of our proposal, we review research on the perception of causation that provides support for a force-based view of causation. We also describe recent findings that establish a direct connection between people’s impressions of causation and their sense of touch. We conclude by showing how a force-based view can be extended to handle the problem of how abstract causal relations are represented and acquired.

A mechanistic approach to individual differences in spatial learning, memory, and navigation

Abstract: Navigation is a complex task that depends on the processes of perception, learning, memory, and reasoning to be successful. Given this complexity, it is not surprising that humans (and other species) vary dramatically in their approach and success at navigation. This wide range of abilities has been of great interest to the field of human spatial cognition. In addition, spatial navigation is a cross-species phenomenon that can speak to a variety of learning and memory processes. Therefore, understanding individual differences in this domain can offer a wide range of insights that affect many behaviors in the real world. A cognitive framework that gives precedent to the flexible use of spatial information and explicit or declarative learning processes has driven much of the work on individual differences in navigation in humans. However, animal models of basic learning mechanisms may also offer substantial insight into individual differences in both how well people navigate their surroundings and in the strategies or styles that they bring to bear on the navigational problems. This mechanistic approach may offer a stronger foundation for not only how individual differences might emerge but also how they interact with differences in the environments and goals that drive our need to learn, remember, and navigate in the world.

When do the effects of distractors provide a measure of distractibility

Abstract: We discuss how, at the present time, there is a large deal of confusion in the attention literature regarding the use of the label “distractor” and what may be inferred from experiments using distractors. In particular, investigators seem to use the concepts of distractor interference and distractibility almost interchangeably. In contrast, we argue at both the theoretical and empirical levels that these two concepts are not only different, but in fact mutually exclusive. To that end, a brief review of several subliteratures is presented, in which we identify some examples of the misuse of these terms. We also propose a new paradigm for the study of distraction, as well as present a contemporary general theory of visual attention that provides a better framework for understanding distractor-interference effects, as well as instances of true distraction.

Space, Time, and Story

Abstract: Life presents as a continuous multimodal barrage on all our senses. From that, we abstract events, discrete units characterized by completion of goals and peaks of action. Effective communication of sequences of events in explanations and narratives is similarly segmented, and linked globally by overall themes and locally by anaphora. Visuospatial explanations and narratives, notably diagrams, comics, and gestures, rely on congruity of mappings of elements and relations of ideas to space and marks in space. Just as we design visuospatial discourse, we design the world: Our design actions in space create diagrams in the world, patterns, piles, rows, one-to-one correspondences, and the like, that express abstractions, categories, hierarchies, dimensions, and more, a circular process termed spraction .

Categorization as Causal Explanation: Discounting and Augmenting in a Bayesian Framework

Abstract: Most empirical studies and formal models of theory-based categorization have focused on how features within a concept are causally related. In this paper, we explore the possibility that concepts and their features should be thought of in a more holistic manner, as embedded in a much larger and context-dependent web of causal connections which can impact categorization. We present a Bayesian model designed to integrate models of categorization, from the classic feature-based view, through concept-constrained causal-model views, to the more holistic causal reasoning implied by Murphy and Medin’s (1985) paper. A set of empirical findings demonstrating causal discounting (Experiment 1) and augmenting (Experiment 2) provide evidence that concept-irrelevant causal knowledge is taken into account in categorization judgments. The implications for this model in terms of broader research on categorization are discussed.

The Cognition of Spatial Cognition: Domain-General within Domain-specific

Abstract: Few would argue against the position that spatial cognition involves cognition. Much of spatial cognition research has focused on illuminating the domain-general processes (e.g. attention, memory, or representation) active in this domain-specific field. In this chapter, we suggest that researchers view this domain-general to domain-specific relationship in the opposite direction. In other words, we review spatial cognition research within the context of its utility for understanding domain-general processes. For a cognitive process to be domain-general, it should be evident across a wide variety of domain-specific tasks, including verbal and spatial ones. Yet, the majority of data supporting domain-general models comes from verbal tasks, such as list learning. Thus, we suggest that considering spatial cognition tasks and findings along with those from other domains would enhance our understanding of truly domain-general processing.

Recollection is Fast and Easy: Pupillometric Studies of Face Memory

Abstract: In this chapter, we discuss several distinct conceptualizations of recognition memory, and their treatment of the (putative) processes underlying recollection and familiarity. We focus most closely on the concept of recollection, which many dual-process memory models assume to be a relatively slow, controlled process, during which contextual details from encoding are brought to mind (i.e., retrieval of episodic detail). We then introduce the use of pupillometry—continuously measuring pupil diameter during task performance—as an efficient means to estimate effortful cognitive processes during memory encoding and retrieval. We review evidence from three pupillometric studies of face memory, providing evidence to suggest that recollection is not slow and effortful, as is often assumed, but is instead fast and easy.