Overshadowing of geometric cues by a beacon in a spatial navigation task

In three experiments, we examined whether overshadowing of geometric cues by a discrete landmark (beacon) is due to the relative saliences of the cues. Using a virtual water maze task, human participants were required to locate a platform marked by a beacon in a distinctively shaped pool. In Experiment 1, the beacon overshadowed geometric cues in a trapezium, but not in an isosceles triangle. The longer escape latencies during acquisition in the trapezium control group with no beacon suggest that the geometric cues in the trapezium were less salient than those in the triangle. In Experiment 2, we evaluated whether generalization decrement, caused by the removal of the beacon at test, could account for overshadowing. An additional beacon was placed in an alternative corner. For the control groups, the beacons were identical; for the overshadow groups, they were visually unique. Overshadowing was again found in the trapezium. In Experiment 3, we tested whether the absence of overshadowing in the triangle was due to the geometric cues being more salient than the beacon. Following training, the beacon was relocated to a different corner. Participants approached the beacon rather than the trained platform corner, suggesting that the beacon was more salient. These results suggest that associative processes do not fully explain cue competition in the spatial domain.     

No evidence for overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of redundant and relevant visual cues on spatial pattern learning. Rats searched for hidden food items on the tops of poles that formed a square (Experiment 1) or a checkerboard (Experiment 2) pattern. The experimental groups were trained with visual cues that specified the locations of the baited poles. All groups were tested without visual cues so that any overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues could be detected. Spatial choices were controlled by the spatial pattern and by the visual cues in both experiments. However, there was no evidence of overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues in either experiment. The results are consistent with the idea that the representation of the spatial pattern that guides choices is not controlled by the same learning processes as those that produce associations between visual cues and food locations.     

Using virtual microscopy to scaffold learning of pathology: a naturalistic experiment on the role of visual and conceptual cues

New representational technologies, such as virtual microscopy, create new affordances for medical education. In the article, a study on the following two issues is reported: (a) How does collaborative use of virtual microscopy shape students’ engagement with and learning from virtual slides of tissue specimen? (b) How do visual and conceptual cues scaffold students’ reasoning? Fifteen pairs of medical students participated in two sessions in which the students used a virtual microscope as a diagnostic tool in the context of learning pathology. The slides provided the students with varying levels of visual and conceptual cueing. The sessions were videotaped, and the students’ reasoning while using the microscope was analysed. The students’ written answers were analysed in terms of the findings they made and the diagnoses suggested. At a general level, the results show that students engage actively in this kind of virtually-mediated environment. The visual and/or conceptual cues improve students’ performance, and guide the students’ perception and reasoning in a manner that is productive from the point of view of learning to make clinically relevant observations. Scaffolding students’ reasoning process through cues furthermore assists the students in avoiding the most obvious pitfalls such as overlooking critical areas of a specimen. Overall, visual and conceptual cues improve students’ reasoning in perceptual and cognitive terms, while still allowing space for the making of “relevant mistakes” that may further the students’ diagnostic skills.     

The contribution of visual and inertial mechanisms to navigation in total darkness

Rats were trained in the Morris water maze to reach a platform in darkness after they had been provided with some information on their initial location. They were given trials with (1) the light on (light condition) and (2) light followed by darkness (dark condition). In this latter condition, the dark period was preceded by either a brief (short group) or a long (long group) initial light period. Although the rats in the short group first oriented accurately toward the platform, their trajectory rapidly deviated in darkness. In contrast, the rats in the long group were able to navigate accurately over a longer distance, but finally also deviated. In transfer trials, the rats in the short group were less accurate than the rats in the long group in the dark; however, both groups performed well in light. This suggests that navigation in darkness depends not only on the use of recent visual and locomotor memory but also on the activation of an inertia-based navigation process.     

In the dark II: spatial choice when access to extrinsic spatial cues is eliminated

Rats were tested in a specially constructed radial-arm maze that eliminated access to extramaze visual cues and allowed any effects of intramaze cues to be controlled. Despite this, choice accuracy was controlled by the spatial location of previously visited arms. Part of this control was attributed to vestibular or kinesthetic cues. This conclusion was corroborated by the finding that when explicit visual cues were moved from their standard (trained) spatial locations to novel locations, control of spatial choices was completely disrupted. The latter finding indicates that cues intrinsic to the rat (kinesthetic or vestibular information) and cues extrinsic to the rat (visual stimuli) operate in an integrated fashion.     

Toxicosis-based aversions to visual cues in rats: A test of the Testa and Ternes hypothesis

Testa and Ternes have proposed that the degree of spatial contiguity between a cue and a food object is an important determinant of the associability of that cue with toxicosis. We found, in accord with the Testa and Ternes hypothesis, that rats showed more profound illness-based aversions to the visual properties of food objects than to the visual properties of food bins or feeding chambers. This result has implications for the design of experiments undertaken to determine the relative associability of cues in different sensory modalities with toxicosis.     

Landmark geometry and identity controls spatial navigation in rats

In three experiments, a new reference memory procedure was used to examine how male rats search for consistently located food in a cue-controlled spatial environment. The animals searched the tops of 24 poles for six hidden baits in an enclosed circular arena containing a fixed configuration of six object landmarks. In Experiment 1, acquisition was faster and overall performance better for theconsistent group (10 rats), in which the six baited poles were fixed relative to the landmarks for each session, than for therandom group (4 rats), in which baited poles were randomly configured. Cue-control tests and computer simulations suggested that the consistent group relied on the landmarks to directly go to the baited poles, whereas the random group used them to employ a response strategy for searching the arena. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that the number, identity, and geometric configuration of the landmarks were important to the consistent group’s search performance. Overall, these results are most consistent with the use of a geometric representation by male rats which includes information about both the identity and the relative geometry of discrete landmarks in the surrounding spatial environment.     

In the dark: Spatial choice when access to spatial cues is restricted

The cognitive mechanisms involved in spatial choice when access to visual cues is restricted were examined in three experiments using male rats. A specially constructed radial-arm maze was used, in which extramaze visual cues could not be perceived from the central arena, but could be perceived from the maze arms. Choices were very accurate when the maze was not rotated during each trial, but inaccurate when the maze was rotated. This suggests that intramaze cues were involved in the control of choices. However, the data clearly showed that choices were not simply controlled by intramaze cues. Rather, control by intramaze cues interacted in a more complex manner with representations of the spatial locations of goals. Such spatial representations were involved in the control of choice despite the absence of visual spatial cues at the time choices were made.     

Support and Challenge in Learning to Teach: the role of the mentor

The increased emphasis on school‐based programmes as part of initial teacher education has resulted in renewed efforts to forge more effective partnerships between higher education institutions and schools. The University of Bath has established a mentor development programme to ensure that subject mentors have an opportunity to examine ways to engage novice teachers in critical reflection about their practice while providing the support and challenge necessary to help them develop as teachers. This study is based on experienced mentors’ and their perspective on their work with novice teachers and it is a follow‐up to earlier research based on Daloz’ model (1986, Effective Teaching and Mentoring, San Francisco, Jossey Bass) of support and challenge. It examines an emerging mentoring pedagogy through which experienced mentors attempt to engage novice teachers in shaping their own vision of teaching. Three mentor profiles are discussed—the laissez‐faire, the collaborative and the imperial mentor.     

Learning in the visual arts and the worldviews of young children

This paper reports a research study into the effects of rich, sustained visual arts instruction on 103 inner city 9‐year‐olds in two major US cities. We use the lenses of social learning theory, theories of motivation and self‐efficacy, and recent research on artistic thinking to investigate the programs' effects on children's self‐beliefs and creative thinking. The study enlisted a pre–post measure, treatment‐comparison group design along with structured observations of participant and comparison group classrooms. The arts students made significant comparative gains on a self‐efficacy scale and on an ‘originality’ subscale of a standard creativity test. These effects are attributed to children's engagement in art and to the social organization of instruction including reinforcing peer and student–adult relationships. Relationships between self‐efficacy beliefs and tendencies to think originally are explored.     

Simultaneous processing of visual and spatial stimuli in pigeons

Pigeons were trained to symbolically match comparison stimuli to either visual sample stimuli presented on a center key or to spatial sample stimuli presented on side keys. Tests were carried out in which visual and spatial cues were simultaneously presented in compound and short-term memory was probed for either visual or spatial information. Symmetrical interference with the matching of visual and spatial components of compounds was found when the visual and spatial cues were presented on separate keys. However, when visual and spatial cues were superimposed on the same side key, no interference was observed relative to element control tests. Discussion of these findings focuses on accounts in terms of limited processing capacity, coding decrement, and receptor orientation mechanisms.     

在线学习视听课程教学过程探析

学生进行在线学习时,大多数使用视听课程进行学习,其学习环境、学习材料与面授课堂学习有很大的不同。通过实地观察得到视听课程教学情况,对其记录、教学分析,发现其中问题,提出改进建议,以供类似课程参考和借鉴。     

Adolescent prosocial behavior: the role of self-processes and contextual cues

Peer- and teacher-reported prosocial behavior of 339 6th-grade (11-12 years) and 8th-grade (13-14 years) students was examined in relation to prosocial goals, self-processes (reasons for behavior, empathy, perspective taking, depressive affect, perceived competence), and contextual cues (expectations of peers and teachers). Goal pursuit significantly predicted prosocial behavior, and goal pursuit provided a pathway by which reasons for behavior were related to behavior. Reasons reflected external, other-focused, self-focused, and internal justifications for behavior; each reason was related to a unique set of self-processes and contextual cues. Associations between prosocial outcomes and sex and race (Caucasian and African American) were mediated in part by self-processes and contextual cues. The implications of studying prosocial behavior from a motivational perspective are discussed.     

Effects of visual cues and self-explanation prompts: empirical evidence in a multimedia environment

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impacts of visual cues and different types of self-explanation prompts on learning, cognitive load, and intrinsic motivation in an interactive multimedia environment that was designed to deliver a computer-based lesson about the human cardiovascular system. A total of 126 college students were randomly assigned in equal numbers (N?=?21) to one of the six conditions in a 2?×?3 factorial design with visual cueing (cueing vs. no cueing) and type of self-explanation prompts (prediction prompts vs. reflection prompts vs. no prompts) as the between-subjects factors. The results revealed that (a) participants presented with cued animations had significantly higher learning outcome scores than their peers who viewed uncued animations, and (b) cognitive load and intrinsic motivation had different impacts on learning outcomes due to the moderation effect of cueing. The results suggest that the cues may not only enhance learning, but also indirectly impact learning, cognitive load, and intrinsic motivation.     

The role of within-compound associations in learning about absent cues

When two cues are reinforced together (in compound), most associative models assume that animals learn an associative network that includes direct cue–outcome associations and a within-compound association. All models of associative learning subscribe to the importance of cue–outcome associations, but most models assume that within-compound associations are irrelevant to each cue’s subsequent behavioral control. In the present article, we present an extension of Van Hamme and Wasserman’s (Learning and Motivation 25:127–151, 1994) model of retrospective revaluation based on learning about absent cues that are retrieved through within-compound associations. The model was compared with a model lacking retrieval through within-compound associations. Simulations showed that within-compound associations are necessary for the model to explain higher-order retrospective revaluation and the observed greater retrospective revaluation after partial reinforcement than after continuous reinforcement alone. These simulations suggest that the associability of an absent stimulus is determined by the extent to which the stimulus is activated through the within-compound association.     

Learning disabilities and the auditory and visual matching computer program

This study examined whether audiovisual computer training without linguistic material had a remedial effect on different learning disabilities, like dyslexia and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). This study applied a pre‐test–intervention–post‐test design with students (N = 62) between the ages of 7 and 19. The computer training lasted eight weeks occurring twice a week for 15 minutes per session. After the training period, an improvement in the auditory‐visual matching test was found. According to the hypothesis of this study, the youngest children with dyslexia would benefit most from the intervention. However, the training had also a positive effect on auditory‐visual matching with older students with dyslexia. Surprisingly, the students with ADD benefited from this intervention. According to the teachers, this intervention had also a positive effect on the students' school behaviour.     

The role of experimenter-odor cues in the performance of object-memory tasks by rats

Two experiments assessed whether odors left on stimulus objects by experimenters who handle them might confound the interpretation of ostensibly visually guided object-memory tasks for rats. In Experiment 1, rats were able to discriminate the relative recency with which an experimenter touched two otherwise identical objects (intertouch interval = 4 sec), presumably on the basis of an odorintensity discrimination. However, after the rats mastered the odor discrimination with no delay between when the second of the two stimulus objects was last touched by the experimenter and when the rats were permitted to attempt the discrimination, their performance dropped to chance levels when this delay was increased to 15 sec. In Experiment 2, rats were trained in two slightly different ways to perform a delayed-nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task, one that involved systematic differences in the temporal order in which the experimenter handled the sample and novel stimulus objects and one that did not. There were no significant differences in the rate at which rats mastered the DNMS task with these two procedures, and the performance of rats that were trained according to the former procedure was unaffected when they were switched to the latter procedure. Moreover, rats required considerably fewer trials to master the DNMS task than the rats in Experiment 1 required to master the odor discrimination. These findings demonstrate that, under certain circumstances, rats can discriminate the relative recency with which two objects are handled by an experimenter, but that this ability contributes little to their performance of conventional object-based DNMS tasks.