The effect of prior practice on memory reactivation and generalization

Three experiments examined the effect of practice on memory performance by 18-month-old infants. Infants were tested using an imitation paradigm; an adult demonstrated a series of actions with objects and infants were given the opportunity to reproduce those actions following a delay. Some infants practiced the target actions before the retention interval (practice) and some did not (no practice). In Experiment 1, a reminder treatment alleviated forgetting by infants who practiced but failed to alleviate forgetting by infants who did not practice. In Experiments 2A and 2B, infants who practiced generalized to novel test stimuli after a 24-hr delay, whereas infants without practice did not. Results suggest practice influences the accessibility and generality of infants' memories.     

The Kamin blocking effect with variable-duration CSs

The role of temporal uncertainty surrounding the time of US occurrence in Kamin’s two-stage blocking paradigm was studied. In Stage 1, stimulus A terminated with the onset of a .5-sec, 1-mA shock US; in Stage 2, a compound stimulus, AX, was similarly reinforced. For different groups of eight rats each, the duration of stimulus A and/or AX was either fixed or was varied from trial to trial. When the stimulus duration was fixed, it predicted the exact time of US onset; when it was varied, it did not. We suspected that uncertainty about the moment of US occurrence might enhance US “surprise.” If so, then blocking might be attenuated in the varied CS-duration conditions relative to the standard condition in which both A and AX were fixed. Within the range of temporal uncertainty studied here, however, no significant attenuation of blocking was observed.     

Frustration effect: The length of blocking interval and magnitude of incentive

In a series of three experiments, forty Sprague-Dawley females were randomly assigned to groups which differed in incentive magnitude in the goalbox. The subjects were then trained for 10 days in a straight alley with no obstruction of approach to the goal. During testing, the rats received two nonblocked and four blocked (delay) trials per day for 11 days. Groups receiving four or nine 45-mg pellets on each trial ran significantly faster following delays than following no delay and tended to be faster following a 4-sec delay than following longer delays. Delay had a similar effect on both running speeds and ingestion rates, with the 4- and 20-sec delays producing a significant frustration effect for running and ingestion in the third experiment.     

The effect of a pretest in an interactive,multimodal pretraining system for learning science concepts

Multiple traits of language proficiency as well as test method effects were concurrently analyzed to investigate interrelations of construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity using multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrices. A total of 585 test takers' scores were derived from the field test of the Pearson Test of English Academic. An MTMM confirmatory factor analysis model was parameterized using 4 traits and 3 assessment methods. The 4 traits included listening, reading, speaking, and integrated skills, while the 3 methods included prescribed multiple-choice responses, constructed responses, and summarized responses. The trait factor loadings were systematically greater than those of methods, providing evidence that the indicators were strongly related to their latent constructs, after adjusting for the method effects. The results showed robust convergent validity, moderate discriminant validity, and insignificant method effects. Implications are discussed.     

When more is less: Extending training of the blocking association following compound training attenuates the blocking effect

Three conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats were performed to assess the influence, following compound training of two stimuli (A and X) with the same outcome (AX-O trials), of extending training of the blocking association (i.e., A-O) on responding to the target stimulus (X) at test. In Experiment 1, backward blocking was attenuated when the blocking association was extensively trained. Experiment 2 showed that forward blocking was also attenuated by extensive further training of the blocking association following the AX-O trials. Experiment 3 contrasted candidate explanations of the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and demonstrated that these results are consistent with the framework of the extended comparator hypothesis (Denniston, Savastano, & Miller, 2001).     

The UCS preexposure effect in taste aversion learning: Tolerance and blocking are drug specific

Following drug preexposure, rats were given taste aversion conditioning in either the preexposure environment or the home cage. For animals preexposed to LiCl, only the subjects conditioned in the preexposure environment showed the typical UCS preexposure effect, that is, an attenuated aversion, an effect consistent with a blocking interpretation of the LiCl-induced preexposure effect. On the other hand, all rats preexposed to morphine displayed attenuated aversions, independent of the preexposure and conditioning environments, an effect consistent with a pharmacological tolerance explanation of the UCS preexposure effect to morphine. The specific mechanism underlying the drug-induced attenuation appears to be drug-dependent.     

Transfer of occasion setting: The role of generalization decrement

In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained on two feature-positive discriminations. A transfer test examined whether the feature from one discrimination enhanced responding to the target from the other. Transfer was obtained, but it was incomplete; the feature produced less responding to the transfer target than to its own. Experiments 2 and 3 examined whether this attenuation of responding was the product of generalization decrement induced by the novel combination of feature and target on transfer trials. Birds were trained on a pair of pseudo-occasion-setting discriminations in which each target was reinforced whether or not it was preceded by its feature. In a subsequent test, there was no loss of responding when novel combinations of features and targets were introduced; on the contrary, responding was, if anything, enhanced in this condition. This suggests that imperfect transfer is not due to generalization decrement but to the fact that an occasion setter is specific to its target stimulus.     

中值定理的推广

将微分中值定理推广到存在单侧导数函数的场合,将积分中值定理推广到被积函数存在单侧极限或单调的场合．     

The derived generalization of thought suppression

Thought suppression appears to be a relatively ineffective and even counterproductive strategy for dealing with unwanted thoughts. However, the psychological processes responsible for unsuccessful suppression are still underspecified. One process that may be implicated is derived stimulus relations, which may underlie the formation of unintentional relations that act to hamper suppression attempts. To test this prediction, participants were trained and tested for the formation of three derived equivalence relations using a match-to-sample procedure. Subsequently, they were instructed to suppress all thoughts of a particular target word that was a member of one of the three relations and were also allowed to selectively remove words that appeared on a computer screen in front of them by pressing the space bar. Results showed, as predicted, that participants not only removed the to-be-suppressed stimulus, but also removed words in derived relations with that stimulus, thus showing transformation of suppression/interference functions via derived equivalence. The theoretical implications of this demonstration, including its potential as a model for a key psychological process involved in unsuccessful thought suppression, are discussed.     

Effects of pretraining on conditioning-enhanced neophobia: Evidence for separable mechanisms of neophobia and aversion conditioning

In two experiments, rats (n = 228) received pretraining access to a distinctive novel flavor (saline) followed by aversion conditioning to a different novel conditioned stimulus (CS) (saccharin). Then the rats were tested for aversion to the CS (saccharin) or for conditioning-enhanced neophobia to a third novel flavor (casein hydrolysate). Pretraining access to a distinctive novel flavor that differed from the CS reliably reduced the magnitude of conditioning-enhanced neophobia to casein, but did not reliably affect conditioned aversion effects to the CS. Pretraining access to the CS reduced aversion effects to the CS and reduced postconditioning neophobia to casein to the performance level shown by ingestion-toxin controls. Results were consistent with the view (Braveman & Jarvis, 1978) that conditioned aversion and neophobia may be independent phenomena with separable underlying mechanisms.     

The limits of socialisation

The article deals with the question of living with others, one of the most significant relationships of human life, and challenge the common understanding of the origins of living with others, where a human being is not just becoming a social but also a moral being through social institutions of societies. This common understanding of a social relationship, fostered and nurtured by a given society, places the responsibility for the possibility of living with others on the other. Drawing on the work from the sociologists Zygmunt Bauman and George Simmel and the philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Knud Løgstrup we argue that the possibility of living with others is based on the rights of the other rather than of the rights to determine whom the other is.By focusing on the relation between the individual and the society on the one hand, and the connections between being moral and being social on the other hand, we suggest that the process of socialisation is devastating not only for human beings individuality and his or her moral capacity but also for a responsive educational praxis. We explore the ways in which an understanding of socialisation as the making of the social being is intimately linked to how institutional education ‘thinks itself.’ This exploration is followed by a critical discussion of the limits of socialisation, and therefore also the limits of education. By considering some of the problems about the making of the social being we arrive at the conclusion that there is the possibility for education to be somewhere else rather than within socialisation. This conclusion leads us to explore the possibilities for an educational praxis that embraces the other without holding the individuals otherness against them.     

The limits of science

The present discussion is not put forward with the usual pride of the scientist who feels that he can make an addition, however small, to a problem which has aroused his and his colleagues’ interest. Rather, it is a speculation of a kind which all of us feel a great reluctance to undertake: much like the speculation on the ultimate fate of somebody who is very dear to us. It is a speculation on the future of science itself, whether it will share, at some very distant future, the fate of “Alles was entsteht ist Wert dass es zu Grunde geht”*. Naturally, in such a speculation one wishes to assume the best of conditions for one’s subject and disregard the danger of an accident that may befall it, however real that danger may be.     

The generalization of behavior modification procedures: A review-with special emphasis on classroom applications

Reports of the use of behavior modification in the classroom are reviewed, with special attention given to the question of whether or not generalization of the effects of the behavior modification programs was obtained. Those programs in which generalization across time, settings, or behaviors was observed were found to differ from other programs in several important ways. These differences were utilized in formulating a set of 15 proposed “rules” for obtaining generalization of the effects of behavior modification procedures. It is suggested that these “rules” be used to make behavior modification more effective, both clinically and practically.     

The effect of localizing the stimulus at the response key on generalization along the hue dimension in the pigeon

After training with a variable-interval schedule of positive reinforcement, pigeons were tested for stimulus generalization along the hue dimension. For one group, the stimulus was located on the response key. For a second group, the stimulus was located on a surface adjacent to the response key. The stimulus-on-key group produced the typical steep gradients normally found with hue stimuli; the stimulus-off-key group produced flat gradients. After discrimination training between the presence and absence of the hue stimulus, both groups produced decremental gradients. In a second experiment, naive pigeons were trained to peck a transparent key with the stimulus surface located approximately 3.8 cm behind the key. When tested for generalization, the hue gradients were decremental. The results suggest that location of the stimulus in the line of sight with pecking is a necessary condition for stimulus control by hue after nondifferential training.     

实数完备性六个等价命题的推广

在R^2上定义了极小上界、极大下界及单调点列,给出了极小上界、极大下界原理和单调有界定理．论证了极小上界、极大下界原理,单调有界定理,闭域套定理,有限覆盖定理,聚点定理,柯西收敛准则六个命题的等价性．最后将之推广到n维欧氏空间R^n上．     

Effects of pretraining on acquisition of novel configural discriminations in human predictive learning

In two experiments, participants acquired one of two target configural discriminations (a biconditional or negative patterning discrimination) in a predictive learning task. In Experiment 1, participants were pretrained with either a configural or an elemental discrimination; in Experiment 2, they were pretrained with a configural discrimination, an elemental discrimination, or a control discrimination that was not expected to bias them toward elemental or configural processing. In both experiments, acquisition of the target configural discriminations was faster after configural pretraining than after elemental pretraining. In addition, the negative patterning discrimination was acquired faster than the biconditional discrimination. Finally, the results of Experiment 2 were more consistent with the notion that elemental pretraining hindered acquisition of the target discriminations than with the notion that configural pretraining enhanced their acquisition. Implications of these findings are discussed.