Methodological suggestions from a comparative psychology of knowledge processes

Philosophers of science, in the course of making a sharp distinction between the tasks of the philosopher and those of the scientist, have pointed to the possibility of an empirical science of induction. A comparative psychology of knowledge processes is offered as one aspect of this potential enterprise. From fragments of such a psychology, methodological suggestions are drawn relevant to several chronic problems in the social sciences, including the publication of negative results from novel explorations, the operational diagnosis of dispositions, the status of aggregates of persons as social entities, and the validation of psychological tests.     

Dissociable interference-control processes in perception and memory

Control over interference is a pervasive feature of cognitive life. Central to research on interference control has been the identification of its underlying mechanisms. Investigations have focused on processes that filter out distracting perceptual information, leading to negative priming, and processes that discard intruding memories that cause proactive interference. Theories differ regarding whether or not a single process during episodic retrieval underlies both negative priming and the resolution of proactive interference. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we combined both phenomena into a single paradigm and found that occipital cortex shows activation uniquely related to negative priming, whereas activation increases in left lateral prefrontal cortex are uniquely associated with proactive interference. This pattern of results contradicts theories that rely on a single process to account for both phenomena. However, results also showed common recruitment of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and parietal regions and therefore suggest that some control processes are shared.     

Dissociable neural systems of sequence learning

Although current theories all point to distinct neural systems for sequence learning, no consensus has been reached on which factors crucially define this distinction. Dissociable judgment-linked versus motor-linked and implicit versus explicit neural systems have been proposed. This paper reviews these two distinctions, yet concludes that these traditional dichotomies prove insufficient to account for all data on sequence learning and its neural organization. Instead, a broader theoretical framework is necessary providing a more continuous means of dissociating sequence learning systems. We argue that a more recent theory, dissociating multidimensional versus unidimensional neural systems, might provide such framework, and we discuss this theory in relation to more general principles of associative learning and recent imaging findings.     

Dissociable learning processes,associative theory,and testimonial reviews: A comment on Smith and Church (2018)

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Smith and Church (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25, 1565–1584 2018) present a “testimonial” review of dissociable learning processes...     

Toward a new outlook on primate learning and behavior: complex learning and emergent processes in comparative perspective

Primate research of the 20th century has established the validity of Darwin's postulation of psychological as well as biological continuity between humans and other primates, notably the great apes. Its data make clear that Descartes' view of animals as unfeeling "beast-machines" is invalid and should be discarded. Traditional behavioristic frameworks--that emphasize the concepts of stimulus, response, and reinforcement and an "empty-organism" psychology--are in need of major revisions. Revised frameworks should incorporate the fact that, in contrast to the lifeless databases of the "hard" sciences, the database of psychology entails properties novel to life and its attendant phenomena. The contributions of research this century, achieved by field and laboratory researchers from around the world, have been substantial--indeed revolutionary. It is time to celebrate the progress of our field, to anticipate its significance, and to emphasize conservation of primates in their natural habitats.     

Dissociable yet tied inhibitory processes: The structure of inhibitory control

Cognitive and neural models have proposed the existence of a single inhibitory process that regulates behavior and depends on the right frontal operculum (rFO). The aim of this study was to make a contribution to the ongoing debate as to whether inhibition is a single process or is composed of multiple, independent processes. Here, within a single paradigm, we assessed the links between two inhibitory phenomena—namely, resistance to involuntary visual capture by abrupt onsets and resolving of spatial stimulus–response conflict. We did so by conducting three experiments, two involving healthy volunteers (Exps. 1 and 3), and one with the help of a well-documented patient, R.J., with selectively weakened inhibition following a lesion of the rFO. The results suggest that resistance to capture and stimulus–response conflict are independent, because (a) additive effects were found (Exps. 1 and 3), (b) capture did not correlate with compatibility effects (Exp. 1), (c) dual tasking affected the two phenomena differently (Exp. 3), and (d) a dissociation was found between the two in patient R.J. (Exp. 2). However, the results also show that these two phenomena may share some processing components, given that (a) both were affected in patient R.J., but to different degrees (Exp. 2), and (b) increasing the difficulty of dual tasking produced an increasingly negative correlation between capture and compatibility (Exp. 3), which suggests that when resources are withdrawn from the control of the former, they are used to control the latter.     

Markov processes in learning theory

Consideration is given mathematical problems arising in two learning theories—one developed by Bush and Mosteller, the other developed by Estes. The theory of Bush and Mosteller leads to a class of Markov processes which have been studied in considerable detail (see [1] and [7]). The Estes model can be treated as a Markov chain, i.e., a Markov process with a finite number of states. For an important class of special cases, it is shown that the Bush-Mosteller model is, in a sense, a limiting form of the Estes model. The limiting probability distributions are derived for the cases treated in both models.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation through a grant given to the Dartmouth Mathematics Project.     

Personality and the psychology of learning

The aim of this article is to examine the interaction between personality and learning in order to find clues to the role that a student's personality plays in the process of adaptation and learning. To scrutinize such an expansive area requires that I cover a lot of territory in a small space, condensing many components and processes. Wherever meaningful, I will direct readers to sources that provide greater depth of coverage. The article is divided into four sections. The first section covers personality theories and models based on a structure-oriented view of personality. The second section addresses personality from a process-oriented viewpoint. Current research findings that relate personality characteristics explicitly to learning processes, strategy use, and metacognition are briefly reviewed. The third section goes one step further and discusses second-generation process-oriented personality models. These models are applied to student behaviour during actual learning episodes. A general outline of my model of the adaptable learning process is given and it is argued that the quality of subjective experience is not just an outcome of personality characteristics. It is influenced by student * situation transactions. In the fourth section, conclusions and suggestions for future research are given.     

Unconscious processes influencing learning

This paper reviews recent experimental evidence on the active involvement of non-conscious processes in human functioning and examines the contribution of this evidence to understanding learning. The experimental concept of 'unconscious processing' is compared to the psychoanalytic notion of the 'unconscious' and some relationships between the two concepts are pointed out. The general idea stemming from experimental research is that, in parallel with what goes on at the conscious level, non-conscious dynamic processes have a very strong impact both in the process and the outcome of learning. Information, which in milliseconds is non-consciously assessed as threatening to the learner's psychological balance, may be disguised or blocked from further processing, therefore affecting the learner's educational competence. The educational material, relationship or atmosphere may provoke non-conscious emotions, attitudes and intentions, which 'inflate' cognition and can affect the individual's current processing of information in various (inhibiting or enhancing) ways. By carefully observing the points where the individual learner is blocked in the 'here and now', the teacher or therapist may deduce useful information on the issues that may unconsciously inhibit learning.     

Response processes in information-integration category learning

Much recent evidence suggests that human category learning is mediated by multiple systems. Evidence suggests that at least one of these depends on procedural learning within the basal ganglia. Information-integration categorization tasks are thought to load heavily on this procedural-learning system. The results of several previous studies were interpreted to suggest that response positions are learned in information-integration tasks. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. Experiment 1 showed that information-integration category learning was slowed but not disrupted when the spatial location of the responses varied randomly across trials. Experiment 2 showed that information-integration learning was impaired if category membership was signaled by responding to a Yes/No question and the category label had no consistent spatial location. These results suggest that information-integration category learning does not require consistent response locations. In these experiments, a consistent association between a category and a response feature was sufficient. The implication of these results for the neurobiology of information-integration category learning is discussed.     

Apparatus as milestones in the history of comparative psychology

Significant apparatus developments from the history of comparative psychology are reviewed, including the contemporary trend toward computer use in research with nonhuman animals. It is argued that milestone apparatus served not only to open new lines of inquiry but also to shape or delimit the nature of the answers that were obtained.     

Inference processes in learning well-defined concepts

In an adaptation of usual experimental techniques for studying the performance of a subject who has to discover a well-defined concept, two theories were independently tested. It was found that Bourne's set of inference operations (Bourne 1974; Salatas and Bourne 1974) predicted fairly well the relative difficulty for the connectives studied (inclusive disjunctive, alternative denial, joint denial, exclusive, exclusive disjunctive) for a stimulus population based on three-valued dimensions but not for a four-valued stimulus population. Reaction times gathered after the subject made no further classification errors fitted the decision-tree structures developed by Hunt et al. (1966). Inspection of the hypotheses subjects made about the rule, revealed two possible major reasoning obstacles: the introduction of a negative attribute and the notion of exception i.e. when the assignment of an attribute in one class depends on another attribute whereas in another class it does not.