Strategic adaptation to performance objectives in a dual-task setting

How do people interleave attention when multitasking? One dominant account is that the completion of a subtask serves as a cue to switch tasks. But what happens if switching solely at subtask boundaries led to poor performance? We report a study in which participants manually dialed a UK‐style telephone number while driving a simulated vehicle. If the driver were to exclusively return his or her attention to driving after completing a subtask (i.e., using the single break in the xxxxx‐xxxxxx representational structure of the number), then we would expect to see a relatively poor driving performance. In contrast, our results show that drivers choose to return attention to steering control before the natural subtask boundary. A computational modeling analysis shows that drivers had to adopt this strategy to meet the required performance objective of maintaining an acceptable lateral position in the road while dialing. Taken together these results support the idea that people can strategically control the allocation of attention in multitask settings to meet specific performance criteria.     

Learning harmony: the role of serial statistics

How do listeners learn about the statistical regularities underlying musical harmony? In traditional Western music, certain chords predict the occurrence of other chords: Given a particular chord, not all chords are equally likely to follow. In Experiments 1 and 2, we investigated whether adults make use of statistical information when learning new musical structures. Listeners were exposed to a novel musical system containing phrases generated using an artificial grammar. This new system contained statistical structure quite different from Western tonal music. Our results suggest that learners take advantage of the statistical patterning of chords to acquire new musical structures, similar to learning processes previously observed for language learning.     

Reaction time as a measure of inter- and intraobject visual similarity: Letters of the alphabet

Interobject visual similarity is often measured by the time that subjects require to say that two objects are not identical, with long RTs indicating high similarity. In Experiment 1, using a complete set of uppercase alphabetic stimuli, we show: (1) RTs correlate strongly with direct ratings of visual similarity. (2) Stimuli that are similar as measured by RT or by direct judgment have the same profile of similarity to all other stimuli in the set as measured by correlational analysis. (3) The order in which the stimuli are compared has only a small effect on measured similarity. All of these results indicate desirable properties of any measure of similarity.Intraobject similarity is a concept pertinent to the relation of an object to itself. In Experiments 1 and 2 we show: (1) All letters are not equally similar to themselves, since RT for the “same” response is different for different letters. (2) The relation between RT and intraobject similarity is opposite to that for interobject similarity, with short RTs indicating high intraobject similarity. (3) Even though intraobject similarities differ, each letter is more similar to itself than to any other letter in the set. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of assumed proximity constraints underlying similarity data.     

Representing time in language and memory: The role of similarity structure

Every day we read about or watch events in the world and can easily understand or remember how long they last. What aspects of an event are retained in memory? And how do we extract temporal information from our memory representations? These issues are central to human cognition, as they underlie a fundamental aspect of our mental life, namely our representation of time. This paper reviews previous language studies and reports a visual learning study indicating that properties of the events encoded in memory shape the representation of their duration. The evidence indicates that for a given event, the extent to which its associated properties or sub-components differ from one another modulates our representation of its duration. These properties include the similarity between sub-events and the similarity between the situational contexts in which an event occurs. We suggest that the diversity of representations that we associate with events in memory plays an important role in remembering and estimating the duration of experienced or described events.     

Physical punishment and childhood aggression: the role of gender and gene-environment interplay

A large body of research has linked spanking with a range of adverse outcomes in children, including aggression, psychopathology, and criminal involvement. Despite evidence concerning the association of spanking with antisocial behavior, not all children who are spanked develop antisocial traits. Given the heterogeneous effects of spanking on behavior, it is possible that a third variable may condition the influence of corporal punishment on child development. We test this possibility using data drawn from a nationally representative dataset of twin siblings. Our findings suggest that genetic risk factors condition the effects of spanking on antisocial behavior. Moreover, our results provide evidence that the interaction between genetic risk factors and corporal punishment may be particularly salient for males.     

Teaching adults new words: the role of practice and consolidation

Semantic and orthographic learning of new words was investigated with the help of the picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this version of the Stroop task, picture naming is delayed by the simultaneous presentation of a semantically related as opposed to an unrelated distractor word (a specific PWI effect), as well as by an unrelated word compared with a nonword (a general PWI effect). This interference is taken to reflect automatic orthographic and semantic processing. The authors observed that participants showed both types of PWI effects for newly learned words following a single study session. Interestingly, specific PWI effects were not obtained immediately after testing but did emerge a week later without additional practice. This suggests that a period of consolidation is involved in the establishment of word representations. In addition, identical PWI effects were obtained when the study and test words were presented in either the same or different letter case. This provides evidence that the newly acquired orthographic representations are coded in an abstract format.     

Learning to label letters by sounds or names: a comparison of England and the United States

Learning about letters is an important foundation for literacy development. Should children be taught to label letters by conventional names, such as /bi/ for b, or by sounds, such as /b/? We queried parents and teachers, finding that those in the United States stress letter names with young children, whereas those in England begin with sounds. Looking at 5- to 7-year-olds in the two countries, we found that U.S. children were better at providing the names of letters than were English children. English children outperformed U.S. children on letter-sound tasks, and differences between children in the two countries declined with age. We further found that children use the first-learned set of labels to inform the learning of the second set. As a result, English and U.S. children made different types of errors in letter-name and letter-sound tasks. The children's invented spellings also differed in ways reflecting the labels they used for letters.     

Preference exploration and learning: the role of intensiveness and extensiveness of experience

In this article, the authors partition the construct of experience into intensiveness (i.e., amount) and extensiveness (i.e., breadth) and examine the impact of the two specific types of experience on preference learning. In the first three studies, the authors' theory that experience can be partitioned into intensiveness (i.e., amount) and extensiveness (i.e., breadth) of experience and that extensiveness has a greater impact on preference learning is supported in environments where prior experience is measured. Further, in study 4 they demonstrate that extensiveness or breadth of experience exerts a larger influence on preference learning in an experiment where each unique type of experience is manipulated as well as measured.     

Simulating mother–child interaction: exploring two varieties of a non‐linear dynamic systems approach1

In theoretical analyses of early mother–child interaction, it has been argued that interaction should be studied in its flow over time, and that the behaviour of each interactant is likely to be non‐linearly determined. The mother–child dyad can be seen as a non‐linear dynamic system, the development of which is determined by the mutual relations between its elements. The present study is based on the idea that computer simulations can be used to find out what kind of empirical implication these ideas have. Accordingly, we describe two non‐linear dynamic systems‐based models for simulating mother–child interaction, i.e. a connectionist network model and a logistic growth model. Three determinants of the nature of the interaction, i.e. the child's irritability, the mother's sensitive responsiveness, and the intensity of an external stressor bothering the child, are varied systematically. Although the results of both simulations differed considerably, they shared the fact that small changes in stressor intensity produced abrupt changes from one type of interaction to another. In addition, increasing stressor intensity sometimes had the paradoxical effect of resulting in less, rather than more, distress on the side of the child. Though irritability and responsiveness were varied in a less fine‐grained way than stressor intensity, the results suggest that similarly small differences in these dimensions at different parts of the dimension's scale range have differentially strong effects on the nature of the interaction. It is concluded that these simulations help us to specify the nature of empirically researchable phenomena that are to be expected, given the assumptions listed above. Further elaboration of the models and comparison with longitudinal empirical data is needed to answer further theoretical and practical questions. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning a new geometric concept: The role of working memory and of domain-specific abilities

It has been suggested that not only domain-specific factors but also working memory (WM) may play a crucial role in mathematical learning included Geometry, but the issue has not been deeply explored. In the present study, we examined the role of domain-specific factors and of verbal versus visuospatial WM on geometric learning of a new geometrical figure (trapezoid), never presented previously by the teachers participating to the study, after a lecture also involving manipulatives. Results on 105 children in their Year 4 indicated that not only some domain-specific components (geometric declarative knowledge and calculation) but also visuospatial working memory had a significant specific impact on the ability of solving geometric problems requiring to calculate the perimeter and the area of the new figure. On the contrary, verbal WM and geometrical mental imagery did not offer a specific contribution. These findings could have important educational implications, stressing the importance of taking into account the main different aspects supporting the acquisition of geometry.     

Depression and interpersonal attraction: the role of perceived similarity

We hypothesized that depressed individuals are generally viewed as dissimilar and that this perceived dissimilarity contributes to negative reactions to the depressed. In addition, we hypothesized that if perceived similarity affects liking of depressed individuals, then nondepressed subjects should prefer nondepressed targets, but depressed subjects should not share this preference. To test these hypotheses, depressed and nondepressed subjects received information about two targets, both either depressed or nondepressed, one attitudinally dissimilar and one attitudinally similar. They were then asked to fill out an attraction measure and an interest in meeting measure for each target. The results clearly supported the primary hypotheses, demonstrating that nondepressed subjects preferred nondepressed targets and perceived them as more similar than depressed targets, and that this preference for nondepressed targets is not shared by depressed subjects. Tests of supplementary hypotheses also confirmed that depressed subjects perceive their best friends as being more depressed and more dissimilar than do nondepressed subjects. The implications of these findings for the social world of the depressed were discussed.     

Maternal depression and dyadic interaction: the role of maternal attachment style

Maternal mental health and the contents of her representational world are important determinants of early parent–child relationship. We examined, first, the role of prenatal and postnatal depressive symptoms and maternal attachment style in predicting the quality of mother–child interaction. Second, we analysed whether the secure‐autonomous attachment style can protect the dyadic interaction from the negative effects of maternal depression. The participants were 59 mother–infant pairs examined during pregnancy (T1), 4–5 months postpartum (T2) and when the children were approximately 14 months old (T3). Maternal attachment style was assessed with a modified Adult Attachment Interview ‐procedure, depressive symptoms with Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and observed mother–child interaction with Care Index. The results show that autonomous mothers were more sensitive and responsive and their children more co‐operative than dyads with dismissing maternal attachment style. As hypothesized, mothers with the combination of both prenatal and postpartum depressive symptoms were highly unresponsive in their dyadic interaction. Further, prenatal depressive symptoms had a stronger impact on maternal unresponsiveness than postnatal symptoms. As hypothesized, mother's autonomous attachment style protected the mother–child interaction from the negative impact of maternal postnatal depressive symptoms, whereas dyads with preoccupied mothers were especially at risk for interaction problems when mothers had postpartum depressive symptoms. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning language from the input: why innate constraints can't explain noun compounding

Do the production and interpretation of patterns of plural forms in noun-noun compounds reveal the workings of innate constraints that govern morphological processing? The results of previous studies on compounding have been taken to support a number of important theoretical claims: first, that there are fundamental differences in the way that children and adults learn and process regular and irregular plurals, second, that these differences reflect formal constraints that govern the way the way regular and irregular plurals are processed in language, and third, that these constraints are unlikely to be the product of learning. In a series of seven experiments, we critically assess the evidence that is cited in support of these arguments. The results of our experiments provide little support for the idea that substantively different factors govern the patterns of acquisition, production and interpretation patterns of regular and irregular plural forms in compounds. Once frequency differences between regular and irregular plurals are accounted for, we find no evidence of any qualitative difference in the patterns of interpretation and production of regular and irregular plural nouns in compounds, in either adults or children. Accordingly, we suggest that the pattern of acquisition of both regular and irregular plurals in compounds is consistent with a simple account, in which children learn the conventions that govern plural compounding using evidence that is readily available in the distribution patterns of adult speech.     

Learning to control brain activity: a review of the production and control of EEG components for driving brain-computer interface (BCI) systems

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology relies on the ability of individuals to voluntarily and reliably produce changes in their electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. The present paper reviews research on cognitive tasks and other methods of generating and controlling specific changes in EEG activity that can be used to drive BCI systems. To date, motor imagery has been the most commonly used task. This paper explores the possibility that other cognitive tasks, including those used in imaging studies, may prove to be more effective. Other factors which influence performance are also considered in relation to selection of tasks, as well as training of subjects.     

Learning in a task of complex auditory streaming and identification

Adult humans were studied for improvements in their ability to segregate natural whole speech in background noise, in 6 test sessions spaced with a very wide range of inter-session interval (ISI) ranging from minutes to weeks apart so as to examine the effect of this parameter on initial (early) and late components of perceptual learning. Improvements were found even with spacings of 3 weeks between the punctate task sessions. All subjects showed similar total learning amounts but there were sex- and ISI-dependent differences in learning patterns, which we indexed by dividing the overall exponentially-decreasing learning pattern into an early phase between the first two sessions and a later phase between the second and sixth sessions. Males tested at all ISIs and females tested at short (2, 5 and 15 min) and long (1–21 days) ISIs showed small amounts of early-phase learning and large amounts of late-phase learning. However, females tested at intermediate (30 min and 1 h) ISIs showed only early learning, i.e., faster learning given that the total learning was the same. This sex- and ISI-specific deviant pattern could be changed to the standard pattern by interposing an overnight interruption that included sleep amongst test sessions. Thus, improvement in this complex auditory streaming and identification task can occur even with very brief and widely-spaced exposure, generally through a standard pattern of slower overall learning, but also through a sex- and ISI-specific deviant pattern of very rapid early learning which can be modulated by interposed delay unlike the standard pattern.     

Performance evaluations, need for cognition, and the acquisition of a complex skill: an attribute–treatment interaction

We proposed that intermittent evaluations of performance could be used to promote the acquisition of a complex skill. We also hypothesized that trainees low in need for cognition (NFC) would benefit more from intermittent evaluations compared to trainees high in NFC. Accordingly, 106 young adult males participated in 5 h of training in order to learn a complex computer task that simulated the demands of a dynamic aviation environment. Trainees’ performance was assessed either intermittently during training or at the end of training. Results indicated that intermittent performance evaluations enhanced the skill-based learning of trainees low in NFC, whereas intermittent skill evaluations tended to undermine the skill-based learning of trainees high in NFC. The findings are discussed in relation to Deci’s (1975) theory of intrinsic motivation and the need for more research examining attribute–treatment interactions with respect to training and skill acquisition.