Verbal labelling and learning strategies in normal and severely subnormal children

The effects of verbal labelling of colours in a simple colour sorting task were examined in an experiment in which the subjects were severely subnormal and normal children of equivalent mental age levels. It was found that the effects of verbal labelling are relatively specific with severely subnormal subjects in comparison to their normal controls. It was also shown that this effect can be explained in terms of the relative independence with which the two responses in a sorting discrimination are learned by severely subnormal subjects both with and without verbalization.     

Proactive and retroactive transfer of middle age adults in a sequential motor learning task

We assessed the effects of aging in the transfer of motor learning in a sequential manual assembly task that is representative for real working conditions. On two different days, young (18–30 years) and middle-aged adults (50–65 years) practiced to build two products that consisted of the same six components but which had to be assembled in a partly different order. Assembly accuracy and movement time during tests, which were performed before and after the practice sessions, were compared to determine proactive and retroactive transfer.     

Increasing purposeful activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults

A time-series reversal design was used to evaluate the effect of a ‘room manager’ procedure on the level of purposeful activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped people in a residential home. The room manager procedure consisted of systematic prompts to participate in recreational activity and social reinforcement contingent on engagement. Data were collected on group and individual client behaviour and two measures of staff performance were taken to assess whether the procedure was implemented consistently across subjects and in line with the experimental design. The results showed that, as well as a group of subjects who engaged at a higher level during the room manager condition, there were consistently ‘high-engaging’ and ‘low-engaging’ groups, reflecting in part the general level of ability of the subjects. However, data on the independent variables show that the the contingency of staff contact did not vary across conditions and it cannot therefore be assumed that these subjects would not respond to the intervention. Some limitations of the procedure as used are discussed, and areas where further work is needed are indicated.     

The learning and motor development transfer process

The aim of this study is to analyze the transference process in motor skill learning. For this purpose, 320 boys and girls, with ages ranging from 3 to 12 years (M= 7.61; SD= 2.61), took part in nine object movement reception drills in which the following variables were cross-examined: the presence-absence of displacement (static or in motion), the corporal segments utilized (hands or arms), the movement direction (right or left), and the moving object (volleyball or tennis ball). The results indicate that what is being transferred is the common factor among them, the ocular-kinesthetic regulating system, which is constructed according to a generalized motor program and a predictive strategy of continuous control. The way that individuals group by levels of skill that represent the developmental levels of the aforementioned regulating system can also be observed. Lastly, the results are discussed, and strategies to improve the learning process in sports and physical education are provided.     

Statistical learning of tone sequences by human infants and adults

Previous research suggests that language learners can detect and use the statistical properties of syllable sequences to discover words in continuous speech (e.g. Aslin, R.N., Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., 1998. Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants. Psychological Science 9, 321-324; Saffran, J.R., Aslin, R.N., Newport, E.L., 1996. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 274, 1926-1928; Saffran, J., R., Newport, E.L., Aslin, R.N., (1996). Word segmentation: the role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language 35, 606-621; Saffran, J.R., Newport, E.L., Aslin, R.N., Tunick, R.A., Barrueco, S., 1997. Incidental language learning: Listening (and learning) out of the corner of your ear. Psychological Science 8, 101-195). In the present research, we asked whether this statistical learning ability is uniquely tied to linguistic materials. Subjects were exposed to continuous non-linguistic auditory sequences whose elements were organized into 'tone words'. As in our previous studies, statistical information was the only word boundary cue available to learners. Both adults and 8-month-old infants succeeded at segmenting the tone stream, with performance indistinguishable from that obtained with syllable streams. These results suggest that a learning mechanism previously shown to be involved in word segmentation can also be used to segment sequences of non-linguistic stimuli.     

The advantage of simple symbols for learning and transfer

A goal of successful learning is the transfer of learned knowledge to novel situations. However, spontaneous transfer is notoriously difficult to achieve. In this research, we argue that learning and transfer can be facilitated when knowledge is expressed in an abstract, generic form. In Experiments 1 and 2, undergraduate students learned two isomorphic domains, which were based on the same algebraic group, with one domain expressed in a more abstract, generic form and the other expressed in a more concrete form. In both experiments, transfer from more abstract to more concrete was greater than the reverse. In Experiment 3, undergraduate students learned the same algebraic group under varying degrees of concreteness. Our results demonstrate that the use of perceptually rich, concrete symbols may hinder learning. This research indicates that concreteness may have substantial learning and transfer costs, whereas abstractness may have benefits.     

The basis of transfer in artificial grammar learning

In two experiments, we examined the extent to which knowledge of sequential dependencies and/or patterns of repeating elements is used during transfer in artificial grammar learning. According to one view of transfer, learners abstract the grammar's sequential dependencies and then learn a mapping to new vocabulary at test (Dienes, Altmann, & Gao, 1999). Elements that are repeated have no special status on this view, and so a logical prediction is that learners should transfer as well after exposure to a grammar without repetitions as after exposure to a grammar with them. On another view, repetition structure is the very basis of transfer (Brooks & Vokey, 1991; Mathews & Roussel, 1997). Learners were trained on grammars with or without repeating elements to test these competing views. Learners demonstrated considerable knowledge of sequential dependencies in their training vocabulary but did not use such knowledge to transfer to a new vocabulary. Transfer only occurred in the presence of repetition structure, demonstrating this to be the basis of transfer.     

The functional form of performance improvements in perceptual learning: learning rates and transfer

The functional form of performance improvements has been extensively studied in speeded cognitive and motor tasks; in such tasks, reductions in response times have been characterized by the ubiquitous power law of learning or by a simpler exponential form. Performance improvements in perceptual capacities are also important in expertise, but their functional form is unknown. This study investigated the functional form of perceptual learning. For individual observers, reductions in thresholds were best described by an exponential function, rather than a power or compound exponential and power (apex) function. Learning was specific to orientation, a result that supports the perceptual locus of the learning, and was decoupled in high and low external noise, a result that reflects separable learning mechanisms in the two conditions. The simple exponential form of learning implies a constant relative rate of learning throughout practice; there was no evidence supporting multilevel hypotheses, such as serial reverse hierarchical and parallel-learning models, that posit multiple processes of learning characterized by different rates.     

The development of infant learning about specific face-voice relations

This study examined the development of infants' ability to perceive, learn, and remember the unique face-voice relations of unfamiliar adults. Infants of 2, 4, and 6 months were habituated to the faces and voices of 2 same-gender adults speaking and then received test trials where the faces and voices were synchronized yet mismatched. Results indicated that 4- and 6-month-olds, but not 2-month-olds, detected the change in face-voice pairings. Two-month-olds did, however, discriminate among the faces and voices in a control study. Results of a subsequent intermodal matching procedure indicated that only the 6-month-olds showed matching and memory for the face-voice relations. These findings suggest that infants' ability to detect the arbitrary relations between specific faces and voices of unfamiliar adults emerges between 2 and 4 months of age, whereas matching and memory for these relations emerges somewhat later, perhaps between 4 and 6 months of age.     

The link between statistical segmentation and word learning in adults

Many studies have shown that listeners can segment words from running speech based on conditional probabilities of syllable transitions, suggesting that this statistical learning could be a foundational component of language learning. However, few studies have shown a direct link between statistical segmentation and word learning. We examined this possible link in adults by following a statistical segmentation exposure phase with an artificial lexicon learning phase. Participants were able to learn all novel object-label pairings, but pairings were learned faster when labels contained high probability (word-like) or non-occurring syllable transitions from the statistical segmentation phase than when they contained low probability (boundary-straddling) syllable transitions. This suggests that, for adults, labels inconsistent with expectations based on statistical learning are harder to learn than consistent or neutral labels. In contrast, a previous study found that infants learn consistent labels, but not inconsistent or neutral labels.     

Measuring the activity of severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults in ordinary housing

Earlier work on the quality of care in settings for severely and profoundly mentally-handicapped adults raised the question whether any useful purpose is served by promoting the extensive use of simple recreational materials to occupy people. Data were collected by direct observation on the activity of 6 adults living in a staffed house organized to promote engagement in household activities. Observations were taken over 5 weekdays from 07.00 to 10.00 and 15.00 to 23.00hr. The results showed that Ss spent between 22 and 67% of available time in purposeful activity. Between 27 and 65% of purposeful activity was engagement in domestic or housework tasks. Even the most handicapped people spent more time engaged in housework than in leisure and recreational tasks. The implications of these data are commented on and measurement issues which arise in ordinary housing as opposed to institutional settings are discussed.     

认知训练对健康老年人认知能力的影响

近年来,认知训练被广泛应用于防治和延缓老年人的认知功能衰退。通过总结近7年(2008~2014年)关于老年人认知功能训练的研究,比较训练的有效性、训练效果的迁移和保持,结果表明,大部分实验都发现了积极的即时训练效果,训练效果得到保持的研究以认知控制和综合认知能力训练为主;大部分的迁移都集中在与流体智力联系较密切的认知功能如工作记忆和注意力等上;部分研究探索了认知功能提升的大脑神经可塑性基础。未来研究应进一步将行为训练与神经测量手段相结合考察训练效果的迁移与保持,更加注重个体差异的影响,并深入考察认知训练对日常生活能力的迁移。