Implicit learning in rule induction and problem solving

Using the Chinese Ring Puzzle (Kotovsky & Simon, ; P. J. Reber & Kotovsky, ), we studied the effect on rule discovery of having to plan actions or not in order to reach a goal state. This was done by asking participants to predict legal moves as in implicit learning tasks (Experiment 1) and by asking participants to make legal moves as in problem-solving tasks (Experiment 2). Our hypothesis was that having a specific goal state to reach has a dual effect on rule discovery. The first effect is positive and related to feedback from moves done in order to attain the goal: generalising the results of action and associating them to the conditions in which they were obtained allows discovery of the rule and learning it. The second effect is negative. In attempting to reach a specific goal, participants first tend to reduce the distance that separates the current state from the goal state (hill climbing) and so neglect the kind of exploration that facilitates rule and procedure discovery because this would seem to be a detour from the goal. Results show that having to plan actions improved performance in implicit learning tasks (Experiment 1), yet it impaired performance in problem-solving tasks (Experiment 2). Although implicit learning and problem solving are based on rule discovery, and entail noticing regularities in the material, in both cases, rule discovery processes appear to be task-dependent.     

Extraversion, attention, and habituation of the auditory evoked response

Short-term changes in the auditory evoked response to low-frequency tones (0.5 kHz, 80 dB) were examined for independent groups of introverts and extraverts under attend and ignore conditions. Introverts displayed greater N1-P2 amplitude than extraverts to the first stimulus in a four-stimulus train. The N1-P2 amplitude differences between introverts and extraverts could not be attributed to differences between the groups in either habituation or attention processes. Overall, the effect is indicative of the introverts' enhanced sensitivity to physical stimulation.     

Reading disability: A problem in rule learning and word decoding

Traditional explanations of reading disability (e.g., perceptual, memory, and phonetic receding deficits) have encountered logical difficulties and substantial empirical disconfirmation. An alternative conceptualization of the nature of reading disability is proposed. Disabled readers are hypothesized to suffer a fundamental problem in acquiring word knowledge and word processing skills. Poor decoding skills prevent them from developing sophisticated reading comprehension skills. From this perspective, the cognitive deficits of disabled readers result from failure to acquire and generalize complex processing skills originally mastered through reading experience. Recent research of the author and of others relating to these issues is discussed.     

规则变型推理对远迁移问题解决的促进

为了避免多重变异样例学习和采用题海战术,并能促进规则样例学习的远迁移问题解决,开创出原样例学习后对原型规则做出变型推理的学习方法,以算术应用题的解题样例为原样例学习材料进行了4项实验研究。结果显示：四年级小学生运用该方法可有效促进远迁移问题的解决;其变型推理能力存在数学成绩等级差异;提供问题情境和推理提示能提高部分学生规则变型推理成绩和远迁移测验成绩。实验结果证明,规则变型推理是促进远迁移问题解决的有效方法之一。     

Offspring of anxious parents: reactivity, habituation, and anxiety-proneness

Reactivity and habituation patterns were examined in the offspring of anxious and non-anxious parents. Although no differences emerged for magnitude of response to either fear-relevant visual or auditory stimuli, offspring of anxious parents displayed significantly more electrodermal activity during resting baseline and during the inter-trial intervals of these stimulus presentations. Differences also were observed for the number of children per group achieving habituation to the fear-relevant visual and auditory stimuli, where offspring of anxious parents were less likely to habituate to either stimuli. The same pattern of group differences emerged after excluding children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, indicating that even offspring of anxious parents who did not have an anxiety disorder differ from offspring of normal controls with respect to their pattern of psychophysiological reactivity. It is hypothesized that these features might serve as an indication of anxiety proneness and risk for the development of anxiety disorders.     

Locus of habituation in the human newborn

There is some controversy concerning the youngest age at which an infant will habituate to a visual stimulus or will prefer a novel to a familiar pattern. One suggestion has been that apparently successful reports of habituation and dishabituation in the newborn baby are attributable to retinal adaptation. This interpretation was tested in two experiments. In both experiments monocular conditions of viewing were used: newborns were habituated with one eye as the 'seeing' eye, and posthabituation novelty preferences investigated with the other eye. Significant preferences were found both for a novel colour (experiment 1) and for a novel shape (experiment 2), which implies that a retinal-adaptation model can be ruled out. It is suggested that the habituation effects and the subsequent novelty preferences found in the experiments are most reasonably interpreted as a function of memory formation, and evidence is presented for the storage of visual experience from birth. The results also demonstrate some form of binocular interaction in the newborn.     

Do the right thing! Rule finitism, rule scepticism and rule following

Rule following is often made an unnecessary mystery in the philosophy of social science. One form of mystification is the issue of 'rule finitism', which raises the puzzle as to how a learner can possibly extend the rule to applications beyond those examples which have been given as instruction in the rule. Despite the claim that this problem originated in the work of Wittgenstein, it is clear that his philosophical method is designed to evaporate, not perpetuate, such problems. The supposed problem of rule finitism is malformed, deriving from misconceptions about the relation between understanding a rule and making an application of it.     

Cardiac deceleration in newborns: habituation, dishabituation, and offset responses.

Twenty healthy, 1–4 day-old infants were selected from a sample of 135 neonates on the basis of alertness during testing. The infants were presented mild intensity colored light with gradual onset and offset while heart rate was monitored. Half the infants received six exposures to blue light followed by two exposures to blue-green light, whereas remaining subjects received colors in reverse order. Stimulus duration was 20 sec and variable periods between stimuli averaged 30 sec. Results of trend analysis of variance of the second-by-second cardiac data indicated that for infants older than the median age, the decelerative responses to both stimulus onset and offset were significant. Further, these subjects' onset decelerations significantly habituated within the six stimulus repetitions and significantly dishabituated with change in the stimulus color. Offset decelerations incremented over habituation trials and decremented with change in stimulus color. Responses of younger subjects were more variable which probably reflects their less complete recovery from the effects of maternal medication and the birth process.     

Models of habituation in infancy

Research on infant cognition using habituation methods has sparked considerable controversy in recent years. At the core of the debates is the issue of whether infants have early (and possibly innate) conceptual understandings. This article reviews a range of computational models of habituation that might provide insights into such discussions. The models are assessed against key behavioral and neural features of habituation: temporal unfolding, exponential decrease, familiarity-to-novelty shift, habituation to repeated testing, discriminability of habitual items, selective inhibition and cortical-subcortical interactions. The review suggests that current models fail to offer comprehensive explanations of the behavioral phenomena.     

Detection theory,micromatching, and the constant-ratio rule

The conformance of detection theory and micromatching with the constant-ratio rule (CRR) was determined by calculations for sets of three stimuli and subsets of two stimuli. For an arbitrary selection of sets, the CRR would be expected to hold quite well if either detection theory or micromatching lay behind the responses. For specific stimulus configurations, however, detection theory and micromatching differ considerably from one another and from the CRR. These configurations are found particularly for the univariate distributions, and this corresponds to empirical findings that the CRR holds better for multidimensional than for unidimensional stimuli. It is shown how the differences between the three theories in the implied constancies of ratios can be used in diagnosis of the basis ofempirical confusion matrices.