Active and passive memory: States, attitudes, and strategies

Six experiments examined the effect of active and passive processing strategies upon recall of verbal and figural material. The strategies were induced at three levels of instructional specificity, referred to as strategy states, strategy attitudes, and specified strategies. The defining attributes of active strategies were a high degree of task control combined with a high degree of self-involvement, whereas passive strategies were conversely defined by low degrees of task control and self-involvement. The tasks, including free and serial recall lists, text reproduction and reasoning tasks, varied in familiarity. In line with the expectations the results showed active strategies to be superior with moderately familiar tasks, and with reasonably precise strategy instructions. With unspecified strategy instructions, and with highly familiar and highly unfamiliar tasks, less difference between active and passive strategies was obtained. The superiority of active processing was thus found to depend both on type of task and on the specificity level of the strategies induced.     

Studies in Binocular Interdependence: III. an Active Principle

Explanations of the nature of thought and the methods of study underlying such explanations were explored from the viewpoints of introspective psychology, methodological behaviorism, and radical behaviorism. Empirical support for the radical behaviorists' interpretation of thought as covert operant behavior was examined. An experimental method was developed which attempted to analyze the functional properties of responsereinforcement connections in the environment inside our skins. Verbal reports of the thought behaviors of a group of graduate students in educational psychology were examined and coded in terms of B. F. Skinner's verbal operant categories. The reported thought units were coded in relation to the environmental contexts in which they were reported, and in relation to the environmental contexts in which the thoughts had actually occurred. Major differences in the verbal operant codings, and in the interrater reliabilities of such codings were discovered depending upon the particular environmental context utilized. Results obtained by scoring the reported thought units in relation to the environments in which the thoughts actually occurred were congruent with the paradigm of operant behavior.     

Active gaze, visual look-ahead, and locomotor control

The authors examined observers steering through a series of obstacles to determine the role of active gaze in shaping locomotor trajectories. Participants sat on a bicycle trainer integrated with a large field-of-view simulator and steered through a series of slalom gates. Steering behavior was determined by examining the passing distance through gates and the smoothness of trajectory. Gaze monitoring revealed which slalom targets were fixated and for how long. Participants tended to track the most immediate gate until it was about 1.5 s away, at which point gaze switched to the next slalom gate. To probe this gaze pattern, the authors then introduced a number of experimental conditions that placed spatial or temporal constraints on where participants could look and when. These manipulations resulted in systematic steering errors when observers were forced to use unnatural looking patterns, but errors were reduced when peripheral monitoring of obstacles was allowed. A steering model based on active gaze sampling is proposed, informed by the experimental conditions and consistent with observations in free-gaze experiments and with recommendations from real-world high-speed steering.     

Active control,agent-causation and free action

Key elements of Randolph Clarke's libertarian account of freedom that requires both agent-causation and non-deterministic event-causation in the production of free action is assessed with an eye toward determining whether agent-causal accounts can accommodate the truth of judgments of moral obligation.     

Active inference, sensory attenuation and illusions

Active inference provides a simple and neurobiologically plausible account of how action and perception are coupled in producing (Bayes) optimal behaviour. This can be seen most easily as minimising prediction error: we can either change our predictions to explain sensory input through perception. Alternatively, we can actively change sensory input to fulfil our predictions. In active inference, this action is mediated by classical reflex arcs that minimise proprioceptive prediction error created by descending proprioceptive predictions. However, this creates a conflict between action and perception; in that, self-generated movements require predictions to override the sensory evidence that one is not actually moving. However, ignoring sensory evidence means that externally generated sensations will not be perceived. Conversely, attending to (proprioceptive and somatosensory) sensations enables the detection of externally generated events but precludes generation of actions. This conflict can be resolved by attenuating the precision of sensory evidence during movement or, equivalently, attending away from the consequences of self-made acts. We propose that this Bayes optimal withdrawal of precise sensory evidence during movement is the cause of psychophysical sensory attenuation. Furthermore, it explains the force-matching illusion and reproduces empirical results almost exactly. Finally, if attenuation is removed, the force-matching illusion disappears and false (delusional) inferences about agency emerge. This is important, given the negative correlation between sensory attenuation and delusional beliefs in normal subjects—and the reduction in the magnitude of the illusion in schizophrenia. Active inference therefore links the neuromodulatory optimisation of precision to sensory attenuation and illusory phenomena during the attribution of agency in normal subjects. It also provides a functional account of deficits in syndromes characterised by false inference and impaired movement—like schizophrenia and Parkinsonism—syndromes that implicate abnormal modulatory neurotransmission.     

Active and passive scene recognition across views.

Recent evidence suggests that scene recognition across views is impaired when an array of objects rotates relative to a stationary observer, but not when the observer moves relative to a stationary display [Simons, D.J., Wang, R.F., 1998. Perceiving real-world viewpoint changes. Psychological Science 9, 315-320]. The experiments in this report examine whether the relatively poorer performance by stationary observers across view changes results from a lack of perceptual information for the rotation or from the lack of active control of the perspective change, both of which are present for viewpoint changes. Three experiments compared performance when observers passively experienced the view change and when they actively caused the change. Even with visual information and active control over the display rotation, change detection performance was still worse for orientation changes than for viewpoint changes. These findings suggest that observers can update a viewer-centered representation of a scene when they move to a different viewing position, but such updating does not occur during display rotations even with visual and motor information for the magnitude of the change. This experimental approach, using arrays of real objects rather than computer displays of isolated individual objects, can shed light on mechanisms that allow accurate recognition despite changes in the observer's position and orientation.     

Motivating People to be Physically Active: Self-Persuasion vs. Balanced Decision Making1

Female members of an adult physical fitness club, who had been inactive for a period of at least one month, were assigned to one of four treatment groups. A control group received no treatment while the other three groups underwent different treatments during a telephone interview. A regular call-up group received a standard club telephone interview advocating greater participation in the club's activities; a decision-balance-sheet group completed a list of anticipated gains and losses for attending the club's activities; a positive-outcomes-only group (i.e., self-persuasion condition) completed a list of anticipated gains for attending the club's activities. Attendance rates for both the decision balance-sheet group and the self-persuasion group were better than for the control group. Also, attendance for the self-persuasion group was significantly better than for the regular club call-up group, Results are discussed in terms of self-persuasion and emotional inoculation processes with respect to behavioral change and behavioral maintenance.     

Active learning: effects of core training design elements on self-regulatory processes, learning, and adaptability

This article describes a comprehensive examination of the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes underlying active learning approaches; their effects on learning and transfer; and the core training design elements (exploration, training frame, emotion control) and individual differences (cognitive ability, trait goal orientation, trait anxiety) that shape these processes. Participants (N = 350) were trained to operate a complex, computer-based simulation. Exploratory learning and error-encouragement framing had a positive effect on adaptive transfer performance and interacted with cognitive ability and dispositional goal orientation to influence trainees' metacognition and state goal orientation. Trainees who received the emotion-control strategy had lower levels of state anxiety. Implications for development of an integrated theory of active learning, learner-centered design, and research extensions are discussed.     

Active avoidance behavior following archistriatal lesions in pigeons.

Experiment 1 examined the performance of 10 pigeons, 5 with bilateral medial archistriatal lesions and 5 sham-operated controls, in the acquisition and maintnenance of a discrete-press avoidance response. The archistriatal subjects had longer response latencies and never attained the level of performance achieved by the controls. In Experiment 2 eight pigeons learned a treadle-press response to avoid or escape shock on a signaled free-operant schedule. After 17 daily sessions four subjects received bilateral lesions in the medial archistriatum, and four received control lesions in the neostriatum. After recovery from surgery, all subjects were returned to the experimental procedure. Avoidance of those subjects with archistriatal lesions was impaired relative to the postoperative level while that of the control group was unchanged. These results are interpreted in the light of earlier experiments showing reduced escape and avoidance behavior both in order avian species and in mammals with lesions in the amygdala, to which the archistriatum is considered homologous.     

Precipitating Circumstances of Suicide among Active Duty U.S. Army Personnel Versus U.S. Civilians, 2005–2010

To help understand suicide among soldiers, we compared suicide events between active duty U.S. Army versus civilian decedents to identify differences and inform military prevention efforts. We linked 141 Army suicide records from 2005 to 2010 to National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data. We described the decedents’ military background and compared their precipitators of death captured in NVDRS to those of demographically matched civilian suicide decedents. Both groups commonly had mental health and intimate partner precipitating circumstances, but soldier decedents less commonly disclosed suicide intent.     

Idea-Generation Techniques: A Formulary of Active Ingredients

The profusion of creativity techniques that have been proposed and used is based on a much smaller set of active ingredients, devices that promote idea generation. This paper reports the results of a study that identified these active ingredients through an analysis of 172 idea-generation methods. Fifty idea-generation devices of three types — strategies, tactics, and enablers — were identified and organized in a formulary. Research results facilitate the evaluation of idea-generation methods and the selection of methods suited to particular idea-generation tasks.     

工作记忆：一个备受关注的研究领域

工作记忆(Working Memory,WM)是对信息暂时保持与操作的系统。它是由英国心理学家Baddeley等人于1974年提出的一个记忆模型[1~3]。30多年来的研究表明,它不仅在表象、言语、学习、推理、思维、问题解决和决策等高级认知活动中起着重要作用[4~6],同时在认知心理学、神经科学和发展心理学等领域中也有很大影响,得到了广泛的应用[7,8]。1工作记忆的发展进程工作记忆是在对短时记忆系统特征研究的基础上提出的。在Atkinson-shiffrin的多重贮存模型中,短时记忆被认为是一个工作系统。它有两个功能:其一,作为感觉登记和长时记忆之间的缓冲器。…     

Active route learning in virtual environments: disentangling movement control from intention, instruction specificity, and navigation control

Active navigation research examines how physiological and psychological involvement in navigation benefits spatial learning. However, existing conceptualizations of active navigation comprise separable, distinct factors. This research disentangles the contributions of movement control (i.e., self-contained vs. observed movement) as a central factor from learning intention (Experiment 1), instruction specificity and instruction control (Experiment 2), as well as navigation control (Experiment 3) to spatial learning in virtual environments. We tested the effects of these factors on landmark recognition (landmark knowledge), tour-integration and route navigation (route knowledge). Our findings suggest that movement control leads to robust advantages in landmark knowledge as compared to observed movement. Advantages in route knowledge do not depend on learning intention, but on the need to elaborate spatial information. Whenever the necessary level of elaboration is assured for observed movement, too, the development of route knowledge is not inferior to that for self-contained movement.