Concept learning by pigeons: Matching-to-sample with trial-unique video picture stimuli

Pigeons were trained to match-to-sample with several new methodologies: a large number of stimuli, computer-drawn color picture stimuli, responses monitored by a computer touch screen, stimuli presented horizontally from the floor, and grain reinforcement delivered onto the picture stimuli. Following acquisition, matching-to-sample concept learning was assessed by transfer to novel stimuli on the first exposure to pairs of novel stimuli. One group (trial-unique), trained with 152 different pictures presented once daily, showed excellent transfer (80% correct). Transfer and baseline performances were equivalent, indicating that the matching-to-sample concept had been learned. A second group (2-stimulus), trained with only two different pictures, showed no evidence of transfer. These results are discussed in terms of the effect of numbers of exemplars on previous failures to find concept learning in pigeons, and the implications of the positive finding from this experiment on abstract concept learning and evolutionary cognitive development.     

Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education

The Leverhulme programme of study into the future of higher education is an impressive analytical effort carried through with expediency and allowing for wide participation. However, the programme is not only an ambitious exercise in policy analysis and unorthodox planning. It also involves processes of bargaining and policy advocacy. But the demands of these different roles have not been openly examined. Thus the programme has unnecessarily rendered itself open to criticism. In particular, many of the recommendations echo a consistent plea for new institutional arrangements for central co-ordination and top-down management and control. These recommendations, however, have received little or no underpinning and are actually at odds with some of the most qualified studies of the Leverhulme programme itself. Furthermore, the programme has tended to neglect two of the most urgent tasks of policy analysis, namely to outline a range of available options - rather than to produce a broad consensus view - and to clearly spell out major value tradeoffs involved - rather than to assure that there are no significant drawbacks attached to the options being advocated.Prepared when the author was a Visiting Scholar of the Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles. The author is indebted to the Director of the Group, Professor Burton Clark, for incisive comments on some of the issues raised by the Leverhulme Programme and to Dr. Gary Rhoades of the same Group for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.     

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES AND PRESENTATION STRATEGIES: CURRENT DIRECTIONS

This paper, first delivered at the 1979 Conference, reviews 25 years of experimental research into production and presentation variables. A number of suggestions are made for continuing research in specific areas and a bibliography of 45 references is appended.     

Developmental issues in cognitive mapping: the selection and utilization of environmental landmarks

2 studies were conducted to investigate developmental differences in the ability to select and use environmental landmarks for cognitively organizing distance information from a walk. In experiment 1, second-grade, fifth-grade, and college subjects viewed a simulated walk and selected scenes that were high in potential landmark value. In experiment 2, children from the same grade levels first viewed the walk and then ranked distances among either the test scenes most frequently selected by their peers or those selected most frequently by adults. Results indicated that (a) adults and children may not spontaneously select the same features as real-world landmarks; (b) children are less capable than adults in judging the value of potential landmarks as distance cues; and (c) the ability to use environmental landmarks as cues for distance information developmentally precedes the ability to assess this potential information value.     

Brief Therapy: A Model for Early Counselor Training

Early counselor training has traditionally stressed acquisition of basic listening skills while underemphasizing instruction in specific problem-solving competencies. This bias may be partly responsible for such frequently observed supervision issues as counselor anxiety, inefficient counselor management of interview time, inadequate problem clarification, and premature intervention. Models for conducting brief, problem-focused counseling seem well-suited for teaching trainees the verbal skills and structuring methods that promote efficient problem clarification and resolution. The purposes of this article are to present one such model, to identify its skills requirements, and to discuss the advantages of using this model in practicum training.