Showing papers on "Perceptual learning published in 1978"

How adaptive behavior is produced: a perceptual-motivational alternative to response reinforcements

Abstract: The sway that the response-reinforcement framework (Spencer, Thorndike, Hull, Skinner) has held on the behavioral sciences for nearly a hundred years is finally ending. The strength of this framework lay in providing concepts and methods for studying the effects of hedonic (reinforcing) stimuli on the repetition of specified responses acquired in instrumental training situations of various kinds. Its weakness lay in the invalidity of its central assumptions, stimulus-response association and response-reinforcement, which could not deal with motor-equivalence and flexibility (or “intelligence”) in behavior. To the four decades of incisive criticism on particular theoretical and empirical grounds, a more comprehensive challenge to the response-reinforcement framework is now added by the newer ideas about the nature of cognitive, motivational, and response-production processes that have emerged from the work of ethologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists. An alternative framework, incorporating the newer ideas, is clearly needed.The particular framework proposed here is based on the ideas of perceptual learning of stimulus-stimulus correlations and of a motivational (rather than reinforcing) role of hedonic (incentive) stimuli. According to it, an act is produced when its act-assembly is activated by a pexgo (perceptual representation) of a certain eliciting stimulus complex (ES). When certain eliciting stimuli are correlated with incentive stimuli, they acquire motivational properties that serve to strengthen the pexgos generated by those eliciting stimuli and thereby increase the probability of activation of the corresponding act-assemblies. Motivation thus influences response production, not by directly instigating “existing” responses, but by modulating the strength of pexgos of eliciting stimuli for the succession of acts that comprise a response. Therefore, a response is always constructed afresh on the basis of current perceptions; not even a stable and stereotyped response occurs as a mere activation of a preformed motor program. The topography of any response that emerges is determined by the nature of the motivational state and the momentary spatiotemporal distribution of eliciting stimuli of changing motivational valence.By suggesting that the animal learns the overlapping and nested correlations between the stimulus events that commonly occur in a given situation, and by separating what is learned from the processes of response production, the proposed perceptual-motivational framework seems capable of dealing with the problems of motor equivalence and flexibility in adaptive behavior. Some implications of this approach for further behavioral and brain research on such problems as behavior modification, learning by observation of models, analysis of causality, and search for neural substrates of learning and response production, are outlined.

A Perceptual View of Conceptual Development

Abstract: Our theoretical and research interests have focused on the interface between perception and learning. This interface poses two fundamental questions: To what extent is learning a matter of perception? and To what extent is perception a matter of learning? Each of these questions requires a consideration of the possible modification of perception through experience, the first because the issue is whether the changes observed in traditional learning paradigms can be attributed to changes in perception, and the second because the issue is whether experience does work enduring change in perception. In approaching either of these issues, then, the starting point must be a consideration of what is perceived in a given situation at the outset of a given experience and what are the possibilities for change in perception. The premise of this chapter, and of much of our work, is that in addressing these questions those working within the learning orientation have underestimated the perceptual possibilities of the typical laboratory task, with the consequence that important contributions of perception to learning and of learning to perception have been overlooked.

Perceptual development: object and space

Abstract: Publisher Summary The two classic theories of perceptual development are nativism and empiricism. Nativism maintains that a perceptually naive organism would have all of the perceptual capacities of a mature, experienced organism. In this theory, experience and practice are irrelevant to the emergence of perceptual skill. The perceptually naive organism need not be newborn. The perceptually naive organism does not have any of the capacities of the experienced organism. The theoretical issues in the study of the perceptual constancies are relatively clear. Adults are capable of a whole range of constancies, position, size, shape, etc., in all of which some aspect of the perceptual response remains invariant, faithful to some aspect of the distal stimulus, despite gross changes in the mediating proximal stimulus. A differentiation theory of perceptual development proposes that in development, the output of perceptual structures becomes precise, detailed, and specific.

Cue Utilization in Judging Facial Expression Related to School Performance

Abstract: Summary Forty-two North American male and female first-grade children judged expression dissimilarity between pairs of schematic faces varying on 1, 4, 7, or 10 binary attributes. An individual differences analysis of the scaling data resulted in five like-perceiving subgroups of children. The subgroups were differentiated on the basis of their differential use of cues and their differential levels of academic achievement and social adjustment. Results were discussed in terms of the implications of perceptual skills in cognitive and social development. The study illustrates the usefulness of an individual differences approach for studying children's information processing.

Perceptual Motor Programs for the Gifted-Handicapped.

Abstract: Techniques for teaching gifted children with the clumsy child syndrome are presented. Explained are procedures for assessment of motor problems, selection of activities specific to those problems a...

Perceptual Aspects of the Reading Process and Its Development

Abstract: An acceptable definition of reading would necessarily be broad enough to include many processes: perceiving, comprehending, remembering, and even making inferences. These cognitive processes would be accompanied by other processes which might be said to serve them such as orienting the head, fixating and moving the eyes, and articulating subvocally. Learning to read, therefore, involves more than perceptual learning. Nevertheless, perception is propaedeutic to any other process involved in reading. The information on the printed page must be extracted; it is embodied in the printed stimulus and can only be picked up by perceptual processes. These processes vary tremendously in efficiency: in skill of discrimination; in the way the page is scanned; in the size of the unit extracted; and in flexibility of attention. Perceptual learning takes place in improving these skills and will thus be stressed. Since reading requires extraction of information from visual displays, visual perception will be considered primarily, but phonologic aspects of words and larger speech units must be related to corresponding visual units and will be considered briefly.

Intermodal relationships in children's perception.

Abstract: Since judgment of geographical slant requires the use of both optical and postural information, such judgments were used to determine whether intermodal relationships affect children's perception. First, third, and fifth graders made judgments of geographical slant of surfaces depicted in photographs either with or without postural inclination. The results indicate the existence of a linear mechanism which compensates for the effect of postural inclination. Compensation was about 50% of that expected from an ideal perceptual system and did not change with age. The present data are similar to those previously reported for adults and suggest that the compensation process develops early in childhood.

Development of Form Perception in Repeated Brief Exposures to Visual Stimuli

Abstract: Many contemporary accounts of visual pattern perception hold that visual form is analyzed in terms of processes whereby specific features are extracted and compared to representations of previously experienced visual forms stored in memory. Two issues arising from this kind of information processing approach are (1) the nature of the features of the visual forms stored or encoded in memory and (2) the nature of the processes by which the stored information interacts with incoming information.

Perceptual and Memory Processes in Reading

Abstract: Levy’s invited paper gives a good outline of earlier work on the role of phonological coding processes in reading and then presents evidence from phonological suppression experiments that phonological codes need to be generated in the course of reading if anything other than vague gist is to be remembered from the text. The experiments, combined with other recent work cited by Levy, provide a new level of understanding of the role of visual vs. verbal codes in reading. The traditional question has been, “Does one need to access verbal codes to apprehend the meaning of a word that is seen?” We can now attend to a more useful question: “Which comprehension processes depend upon verbal codes?”

Chapter 7 – PERCEPTUAL LEARNING*

Abstract: Publisher Summary Perceptual learning is a broad topic and it refers to the learning of the stimulus for perception. The brain is bombarded by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, things to touch, and temperatures and movements of the body. During the course of development, humans learn to adjust to the stimulus aspects of their environments. The stimulus may affect more than one modality. Perceptual learning is difficult to separate from cognitive learning. Cognition is a part of perceptual learning; however, the study of cognition goes beyond that of perceptual learning. The two topics may be partially intertwined; however, each has its own area of specialization. This chapter provides examples of perceptual learning and it discusses the importance for perceptual learning, the notion of using distinctive features and prototypes, and the concept of differentiation. Habituation is a simple form of perceptual learning that can be demonstrated in a wide variety of species. Those who study perceptual learning are very interested in phenomena like imprinting, interaction of the environment and maturation, and temporary states such as habituation. What is peripheral to the classical study of learning is of central importance to the study of perceptual learning. Thus, the study of perceptual learning has developed independently of the traditional study of learning.

Perceptual and Mojo7 Skills, 1978,47, 143-146. @ Perceptual and Motor Skills 1978 RELATIONSHIP OF REFERENCE GROUP TO PERCEPTION OF HUMOR

Abstract: Psychosocial importance of humor in reduction of anxiety and communication was developed, with specific consideration of group influence on perception of humor. Subjects were 15 black females, 20 white females, 13 black males, and 16 white males. Cartoons depicting seven humorous themes were rank ordered in terms of ‘funniness.’ Group mean ranks were transformed into ordinal integers. Groups applied similar concepts of humor to rankings (W = .68, p < .05), though rank correlations showed significant relationships only between white females, black females, and white males.

Perceptual versus mediational learning in a total change concept-shift paradigm.

Abstract: The experiment investigated the effects of language acquisition by children in Grades 1 to 4 on performance in a concept-shift task in which the relevant stimulus attributes were either the colour of ink in which a word was written or the meaning of the word. Both English stream and French Immersion children served as subjects. The results indicated a developmental sequence from perceptual learning to verbal mediation. This process was demonstrated at an earlier stage in the French Immersion students who formed a more highly selected group, and intellectual or socio-economic explanations for these differences may be feasible. The relative speed of acquisition of intradimensional and extradimensional shifts interacts with the perceptual/mediational process.