Reactive Inhibition Theory and Intertrial Correlations

From certain theoretical properties of Hull’s reactive inhibition and from the known modest reliability of reminiscence measures, it follows that intertrial correlations among psychomotor test scores should be higher under distributed-practice conditions than under massed-practice conditions. This proposition was tested in a conventional practice distribution paradigm involving 168 Caucasian subjects. Bartlett’s test for the homogeneity of covariance matrices confirmed the prediction, and a sign test for matched correlation pairs showed that correlations in the distributed practice mode were significantly more often higher than those in the massed practice mode. These results refute the prevailing view that intertrial correlations are invariant with respect to practice distribution, and they strengthen the credibility of Hull’s principle of reactive inhibition.     

Some Physiological Concomitants of Pursuit Rotor Performance and Reminiscence

A frustration theory of pursuit rotor performance and reminiscence has previously been presented (Costello, 1967; Costello & Discipio, 1967). The theory was reformulated in terms of arousal theory and the following hypotheses were tested: (1) an inverted “U” relationship exists between level of arousal and performance level; (2) reminiscence results when S during the rest period moves closer to his optimum level of arousal; (3) massed practice produces a higher level of arousal than spaced practice; (4) experimental conditions producing a high drive state will also increase his arousal level. Findings in line with these hypotheses were found for EMG measures but not for GSR and pulse rate. In view of what appears to be the task-specific nature of the physiological results it was concluded that there was no particular advantage in reformulating the frustration theory in terms of arousal theory.     

Mom, Let Me Play More Computer Games: They Improve My Mental Rotation Skills

This study investigated how 3-D and 2-D computer game practice and delivery as well as individual differences affect performance on two tests of mental rotation (Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test and Card Rotation Test). Sixty-one US undergraduates from the Midwest completed 4 h of either massed or distributed practice. While computer game practice improved mental rotation scores in general, women’s gains were significantly greater than men’s, and the most significant gains were accomplished when practice was massed. High mathematical ability, gender, and type of practice significantly predicted improvement scores. The findings suggest that even very minimal computer game practice may improve performance on mental rotation tasks.     

The Problem of the Meaning of Words Based upon Observation of Aphasic Patients

Research has indicated that massed systematic desensitization can be effective. There is no definite evidence, however, of the superiority of massed or spaced therapy. The present study investigated the effects of massed and distributed systematic desensitization upon a spider phobia. Eighteen Ss were given a fear hierarchy before therapy and then after therapy. Analysis of the results suggests that massed and distributed sessions do not differ significantly in effectiveness, which supports Suinn and Hall (5).     

Massed vs. spaced exposure sessions in the treatment of agoraphobia

The differential effects of massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo were investigated with 11 agoraphobics in a crossover design. Clients were randomly assigned to one of the following two groups: (a) 10 daily sessions followed by 10 weekly sessions, or (b) 10 once-weekly sessions followed by 10 daily sessions. The results indicated that both massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo effected changes in avoidance behavior and subjective anxiety of agoraphobics, massed practice being superior especially with respect to avoidance. It was suggested that the superiority of massed practice is due to the lack of opportunity to engage in avoidance or escape during short inter-session intervals. The relationship between subjective anxiety and avoidance were considered and the differences between clinical and statistical significance were discussed.     

Transfer of Reactive Inhibition

A serious challenge to Hull’s (1943) theory of reminiscence and intertrial-interval effects is posed by the current contention that reactive inhibition (I_R) must be task-specific since it does not seem to transfer from one task to another. This notion was examined within the framework of a practice-rest paradigm in which three control groups were given 20 1-min trials on a principal task with intertrial intervals of 0, 5, and 70 sec, respectively, while two experimental groups practiced alternately on the principal task and a secondary task known to produce evidence for I_R. The two secondary tasks varied in their similarities to the principal task. Additional control groups were used to assess the magnitude of habit transfer effects. The total sample consisted of 70 males and 70 females whose modal age was 18 yr. With habit transfer effects controlled, results showed clearly that work effects transferred from the alternate tasks to the main task without regard for differences in similarity. Thus, the task-specificity hypothesis was not supported.     

Toward an understanding of students’ allocation of study time: Why do they decide to mass or space their practice?

Two recent studies have led to discrepant findings regarding students’ decisions to mass or space practice of to-be-learned items: Son (2004) reported that participants chose to mass practice of difficult items more than that of easy items, whereas Benjamin and Bird (2006) reported the opposite. To resolve this apparent discrepancy, we had participants study items during an initial trial and then decide whether the next study trial would be massed or spaced. Across three experiments, we systematically varied factors that differed across these studies. In general, the participants more often chose to space than to mass practice, but they did favor massed practice when items were very difficult to learn. Moreover, although previous hypotheses implicated metamemory causes for these effects, the present results indicate that nonmetamemory causes are also responsible, such as using spaced practice as a default and deciding to mass practice for items that had not been fully perceived during an initial study trial.     

Studies in Spaced and Massed Learning: III. Paired-Associate and Serial Learning

An experiment on paired-associate learning was carried out to test Hovland's prediction that spaced practice should be more advantageous than massed if the order of presenting the pairs of nonsense syllables were fixed.

In the results, spaced and massed practice showed little difference in learning efficiency. Hovland's prediction was not confirmed.

In a previous experiment of this series of studies it had been found that spaced practice was more efficient than massed in serial learning when syllables of “low-meaningfulness” value were used; but that there was little difference in efficiency between the two forms of distribution when “high-meaningfulness” syllables were used. The results of the two experiments naturally suggested that, as regards the relative efficiency of spaced and massed practice, paired-associate learning of low-meaningfulness syllables differed from serial learning of similar syllables, but matched serial learning of high-meaningfulness syllables. It seems justifiable to draw the conclusion that the relative efficiency of spaced and massed practice is different in paired-associate and serial learning, not because remote associations can be formed in the one case and not in the other, as Hovland (1939a, 1939b) assumed; but because the organization of the material and the learning processes are different in the two forms of learning.     

Effects of spacing and embellishment on memory for the main points of a text

An advantage has been found for acquiring textbook knowledge by studying textbook summaries rather than reading the original prose (Reder & Anderson, 1980). Three studies are presented that help to establish the cause of the summary advantage. One possible cause is that reading summaries allows the subject to reread the main points at spaced intervals, and spaced practice is superior to massed practice. A second possible cause is that the presence of details distracts the subject’s attention away from the critical ideas that should be attended to. In Reder and Anderson (1980), these two factors were confounded, but they are unconfounded in the present studies. The results indicate that both possible causes, spaced practice and the absence of details, have significant, independent, and positive effects on retention of the central ideas of a passage.     

The effects of intertrial interval and instructional format on skill acquisition and maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorders

We replicated and extended the study by Koegel, Dunlap, and Dyer (1980) by examining the effects of 3 intertrial‐interval (ITI) durations on skill acquisition in 2 children with autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, we compared the effect of short (2 s), progressive (2 s to 20 s), and long (20 s) ITIs on participants’ mastery of tacts or intraverbals presented in massed‐trial and varied‐trial instructional formats. We also measured (a) stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI, (b) maintenance of skills, and (c) responding to novel adults and settings. Results showed that short ITIs in a varied‐trial format produced the most efficient acquisition of skills; however, most ITI durations produced more efficient skill acquisition in a varied format compared to a massed format. The trial format and ITI duration associated with the lowest levels of stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI and responding during maintenance and novel adult and setting probes differed across participants.     

Effects of two retention interval components on performance differences between study-test and anticipation methods in paired-associate learning

Given that the retention interval consists of two qualitatively different and operationally distinguishable components, both separate and joint effects of them were necessary to assess their relative dominance in controlling both significant and nonsignificant performance differences between anticipation and study (reinforcement)-test methods; thus illuminating results thought inconsistent for about two decades. Three paired-associate learning experiments, with a total of 167 university students, were conducted with both massed (no intercycle or Type I interval) and spaced (30 sec Type 1 intervals) practice within each experiment. Both significantly and nonsignificantly superior performance resulted for the study-test method vis-à-vis the anticipation method with massed practice without practice. Findings support the retention interval hypothesis (Izawa, 1972) which is further strengthened when augmented with the capacity to account for the absolute performance differences between methods.     

Context Shift and Protein Synthesis Inhibition Disrupt Long-Term Habituation after Spaced,but Not Massed,Training in the CrabChasmagnathus

An opaque screen moving overhead elicits an escape response in the crabChasmagnathusthat after a few presentations habituates for a long period (long-term habituation, LTH). Previous results suggested that spaced (15 trials separated by 171 s) and massed training (300 trials without rest interval) were correlated with two different memory components of LTH. The present experiments were aimed at further studying the mechanisms subserving these components. Results indicate that LTH acquired by spaced but not by massed training is blocked either by a training-to-testing context shift or by cycloheximide (15–25 μg) pre- or posttraining injection and that LTH after spaced training persists for longer time (5 days) than after massed training (2 days). A model based on these results that distinguishes two LTH-memory components is proposed: a (context-signal) LTH yielded by spaced training, dependent of context, sensitive to cycloheximide (CYX), and long lasting; and a (signal) LTH yielded by massed training, dependent only on the signal invariance, insensitive to CYX, and shorter lasting.     

Patterning,partial reinforcement,and N-length effects at spaced trials as a function of reinstatement of retrieval cues

Four experiments are reported which demonstrate the importance of the reinstatement of retrieval cues in partial-reinforcement experiments using spaced trials. Reinstatement occurs when the goalbox and startbox are of the same brightness (gray). Nonreinstatement occurs when the goalbox and startbox are of different brightnesses (black-and-white striped vs gray). Under reinstatement conditions, both a partial-reinforcement effect (PRE) and N-length effects were observed whether small reward or large reward was used. Under nonreinstatement conditions, a PRE was observed when large reward was used but not when small reward was used; N-length effects were not observed either with large or small reward. Finally, using a 24-hr intertrial interval, single alternation patterning was found only with a group receiving large reward, a long nonreward confinement duration, and reinstatement. These results are not consistent with the notion that massed and spaced trials are governed by separate mechanisms, and support an explanation of both massed and spaced trials based on E. J. Capaldi's sequential theory.     

Distinct episodic contexts enhance retrieval-based learning

Spaced retrieval practice results in better long-term retention than massed retrieval practice. The episodic context account of this effect suggests that updated representations of the more distinct temporal contexts associated with spaced retrievals facilitate later recall. We examined whether environmental context, in addition to temporal context, may also play a role in retrieval-based learning. Participants studied and then attempted to retrieve the English translations of Swahili words during four acquisition blocks of trials. They were then randomly assigned to practice retrieving items three more times in one of the following conditions: massed practice with the same environmental context scene; massed practice with different environmental context scenes; spaced practice with the same environmental context scene; or spaced practice with different environmental context scenes. After a one-week delay, measures of recall, forgetting, and the joint probabilities between study session recall and final recall performance all indicated enhanced retention for both the spaced and different environmental context conditions. Indeed, after retrieving items in the study session, forgetting them during final recall was 371% more likely in the same context than in the different context conditions. These findings redefine and refine previous accounts of the episodic context model of retrieval-based learning.     

CS Intensity effects on rabbit nictitating membrane conditioning,extinction and generalization

One purpose of the present experiments was to determine if the Grice and Hunter (1964) observation of augmented within-versus between-Ss CS intensity effects in human eyelid conditioning would be obtained in conditioning of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response under two (Experiment 1) and four (Experiment 2) CS intensity values. In addition, a determination was made of the effects of CS intensity upon extinction and stimulus intensity generalization gradients. The studies revealed that: (a) while acquisition performance was positively related to CS intensity, the effect was independent of the between and within-S manipulation of CS intensity; (b) rate of response decrement in extinction was an inverse function of CS intensity; and (c) a positively sloped intensity generalization gradient was obtained when the training stimulus was the low-intensity one. Overall, these results are most consistent with Hull’s (1949) stimulus intensity dynamism account of CS intensity effects in conditioning.     

Short-term desensitization therapy

R has raised the possibility that behavior therapy procedures can benefit from even further departures from traditional psychotherapy formats. Although behavioral approaches such as desensitization therapy are distinctive departures from the verbal psychotherapies, there is still an implicit commitment to one traditional approach: the reliance upon one or two weekly appointments. Clients being treated for phobias, for example, are typically seen for desensitization sessions twice weekly. Yet, both theory and current research argue for more frequent meetings as being more effective. Robinson and Suinn (1969) saw clients with spider phobia daily for five consecutive days, meeting one hr per day. Clients were tested on a behavioral task prior to and following massed treatment. Results showed that prior to therapy, none of 20 clients were able to place their hands near the spider; following massed treatment, all clients improved, 13 clients placed their hands within 12 in. of the spider, 2 touched the spider and 1 client stroked the 4 in. spider twice as it moved across the cage. Suinn and Hall (1970) relied upon an even shorter treatment period: students with test-taking anxiety were desensitized completely within 24 hr. These clients were trained to relax and exposed to hierarchy items from 1–4 p.m. on Friday and 8–12 noon the next day. Results showed that the marathon treated clients showed recoveries to the same degree as that achieved in a group treated over a course of 4 weeks. Theoretically, massed treatment should be more effective than spaced treatment. This is based on the view that massed practice would lead to the extinction of fear or anxiety responses since this method capitalizes upon two factors: (1) counterconditioning, whereby the fear stimulus becomes conditioned to relaxation instead of anxiety, and (2) conditioned inhibition, whereby the anxiety responses become ‘fatigued’ and non-responding is reinforced. Implosive therapy (Stampfl and Levis, 1967) appears to be basically a type of massed practice in which the client is continuously exposed to extremely frightening scenes to extinguish the fear. In implosive therapy the client is kept anxious during the treatment; in massed or marathon desensitization, the client is relaxed throughout the sessions. The purpose of this report is to summarize some results achieved through massed desensitization.     

The Schematic Representation of Effector Function Underlying Perceptual-Motor Skill

Conceptual and methodological problems related to Schmidt’s (1975) motor schema theory are discussed. In particular, the motor schema is interpreted as representing the dynamics of the system being controlled, which may or may not be associated with a referent movement pattern. Furthermore, it is suggested that prior familiarity with a control system’s dynamics is a critical but uncontrolled factor in tests of the theory, and largely accounts for their equivocal findings. These ideas are examined by two experiments in which subjects had to bimanually control the movement of a computer-displayed cursor along a track on a CRT screen. Different track orientations required different patterns of movement not entailing a single generalized motor program. Experiment 1 shows that variable track performance with a given control system, results in better transfer to novel tracks than does fixed practice. Experiment 2 demonstrates that altering the control system disrupts performance whether or not the required movements remain the same. These results indicate the need for a fundamental modification of schema theory, such that a schematic representation of effector-environment relations (effector function) is available independently of particular movement patterns used in its acquisition.     

Massed extinction trials produce better short-term but worse long-term loss of context conditioned fear responses than spaced trials

A series of experiments studied the effects of the interval between extinction trials on the loss of context conditioned freezing responses. Rats were shocked in one context (A) but not in another (B) and subjected to extinction trials in context A. In Experiment 1, massed trials produced more rapid loss than spaced trials. A shift from spaced to massed trials maintained this loss, but the shift from massed to spaced trials restored lost responses. Experiments 2-5 examined this effect of massed trials on responding across spaced trials. They provided evidence that (a) a single trial was as effective as multiple daily massed trials, (b) learning occurred on the first of the massed trials but not on later ones, and (c) the first trial reduced the amount learned across subsequent massed trials. Finally, alternating extinction trials in A and B produced more response loss across spaced trials than blocks of trials in A and B. The results were discussed in terms of the role accorded to self-generated priming in the models developed by A. R. Wagner (1978, 1981).     

Does mediator use contribute to the spacing effect for cued recall? Critical tests of the mediator hypothesis

When study is spaced across sessions (versus massed within a single session), final performance is greater after spacing. This spacing effect may have multiple causes, and according to the mediator hypothesis, part of the effect can be explained by the use of mediator-based strategies. This hypothesis proposes that when study is spaced across sessions, rather than massed within a session, more mediators will be generated that are longer lasting and hence more mediators will be available to support criterion recall. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to study paired associates using either a spaced or massed schedule. They reported strategy use for each item during study trials and during the final test. Consistent with the mediator hypothesis, participants who had spaced (as compared to massed) practice reported using more mediators on the final test. This use of effective mediators also statistically accounted for some – but not all of – the spacing effect on final performance.     

„Fort-da — die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies — ins Leben“

The paper attempts to explore the choreography of this text which is central to psychoanalytic thinking and clinical practice. Especially the “Fort-da”-game of his grandson Ernst, in addition to the observation of traumatized people, lead Freud to question the assumptions of drive theory. How can the intrapsychic repetition of trauma and the pain of separation, in essence the repetition compulsion, be compatible with the pleasure principle? Freud’s considerations lead him to the assumption that there is a form of psychic functioning which pre-dates the pleasure principle, is independent from it and seems to have developed even prior to the intention of gaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure — a state of “beyond the pleasure principle”. Thus the question arises how this can be compatible with drive theory which is centered around the pleasure principle. What is the meaning of Freud’s words when he speaks about a time which pre-dates the pleasure principle and where the difference between wish and wish fulfilment and (drive)conflicts, which characterize our life, do not yet exist? Freud’s reconsideration and correction of drive theory and the introduction of the death drive seem to us an epistemological circle in his reasoning and the assumption of the death drive to be unnecessary. The introduction of the death drive seems rather to have arisen from an inner conflict between drive theory and a narcissism which is not drive-determined and which is reflected in the repetition compulsion. It seems that Freud is not aware of or does not explicitly mention the perspective of a non-drive-determinated narcissism, although we find such a point of view in other Freudian texts. Bela Grunberger’s theory of narcissism enables one to reread this text with a new perspective which has important consequences for psychoanalytic practice. For example, the question as to what it is that enables the patient to get through the painful process of psychoanalysis appears in a new light. In addition we gain new insight and a re-evaluation concerning the meaning and use of a transference interpretation. A clinical case attempts to illustrate this perspective.