Costs and benefits of strategy construction in a speeded discrimination task

The costs and benefits of constructing and utilizing a strategy for performing a speeded discrimination task were assessed in terms of time and mental resources. The strategy involved using information about the position a word occupied in order to respond to its identity more rapidly. The resources used to construct and utilize the strategy were assessed from responses to probes presented at various times during the task. In Experiment 1, the probe required a manual response, whereas in Experiment 2, the probe required a vocal response. Strategy construction interfered with the probe task in Experiment 1 but not in Experiment 2, suggesting that strategy construction required resources specific to the manual response system. There was also some evidence that strategy construction required general resources, but the evidence for specific resources was much stronger. The findings are consistent with our previous ideas about how the strategy is represented (Logan, 1980a; Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979). The different results with different responses to the probes point out important limitations on previous studies of probe interference and of cost-benefit analysis, which each focused on a single dimension of cost and benefit. The differences suggest that a multiple-resources approach to probe interference and cost-benefit analysis might be more appropriate.     

External focus and autonomy support: Two important factors in motor learning have additive benefits

We examined whether the combination of two factors that have consistently been found to enhance motor learning – an external focus (EF) of attention and autonomy support (AS) – would produce additive benefits. Participants practiced throwing with their non-dominant arm. In a 2 × 2 design, they were or were not asked to focus externally (i.e., on the target), and were or were not given a choice (autonomy support). The latter involved choosing 2 5-trials blocks during practice on which they used their dominant arm. All four groups – EF/AS, EF, AS, and C (control) – completed a practice phase consisting of 60 trials. The distance to the target (bull’s eye) was 7.5 m. One day later, participants performed retention (same target distance) and transfer tests (8.5 m). Both external focus instructions and autonomy support enhanced retention and transfer performance. Importantly, the combination of these factors resulted in additive learning advantages. The EF/AS group showed the greatest throwing accuracy, and the EF and AS groups outperformed the C group. In addition, self-efficacy measured after practice and before retention and transfer was increased by both factors. Thus, promoting an external focus of attention and supporting learners’ need for autonomy seem to independently influence learning.     

Antecedents and consequences of mothers' autonomy support: an experimental investigation.

This study examined the effects of contextual and individual differences on mothers' autonomy support versus control on homeworklike tasks. Sixty mothers and their third-grade children worked on map and poem tasks, with mothers in either an ego-involving (high pressure) or a non-ego-involving (low pressure) condition. Later, children worked on similar tasks themselves. Mothers in the high-pressure condition were more controlling on the poem task. For the map task, mothers who came in with controlling styles and received the high-pressure manipulation were most controlling. Children whose mothers interacted in a more controlling manner wrote less creative poems when alone. Results suggest the importance of context, children's competence levels, and mothers' styles in determining levels of autonomy support.     

Costs and benefits of dropout schedules of test–restudy practice: Implications for student learning

Almost all previous studies examining the benefits of testing for promoting student learning have used fixed schedules of practice. However, students more often report utilizing a dropout schedule of practice, in which items are dropped from practice once they are known. Two experiments investigated the costs and benefits of utilizing a dropout schedule of test–restudy practice. Participants learned Swahili–English paired associates using a dropout schedule or a fixed schedule. In the dropout schedule, items received test–restudy practice until each item was correctly recalled once. In the fixed schedule, all items received three tests–restudy practice trials regardless of whether they were correctly recalled, as in previous research. Experiment 2 also included a second learning session. In both experiments, a final cued recall test was administered several days later. Results indicated that the benefits of the dropout schedule (fewer practice trials used overall and all items correctly recalled once during practice) need to be considered in light of the costs (lower levels of final test performance). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The neural correlates of reward-related trial-and-error learning: an fMRI study with a probabilistic learning task

This fMRI study investigated the neural correlates of reward-related trial-and-error learning in association with changing degrees of stimulus-outcome predictabilities. We found that decreasing predictability was associated with increasing activation in a frontoparietal network. Only maximum predictability was associated with signal decreases across the learning process. The receipt of monetary reward revealed activation in the striatum and associated frontoparietal regions. Present data indicate that during reward-related learning, high uncertainty forces areas relevant for cognitive control to remain activated. In contrast, learning on the basis of predictable stimulus-outcome associations enables the brain to reduce resources in association with the processes of prediction.     

Costs and benefits of collaborative remembering

Collaborative inhibition, the poorer memory performance of collaborative groups as compared with nominal (noninteracting) groups was measured in the free recall of categorized lists. In Experiment 1, collaborative inhibition was present in four‐person groups, but not in pairs of two‐person groups, where each was compared with performance in four‐person nominal groups. However, on a final individual free recall test, members of two‐ and four‐person collaborative groups recalled a higher proportion of the list than members of nominal groups. In Experiment 2, recall in three‐person collaborative groups was less than in three‐person nominal groups but only on the first of three successive study‐test trials. On the final individual free recall test, members of collaborative groups recalled more words than members of nominal groups. Despite inhibiting recall and reminiscence, collaboration benefits remembering when collaborators are subsequently tested individually. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Getting a tool gives wings: overestimation of tool-related benefits in a motor imagery task and a decision task

Two experiments examine whether people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use in motor tasks. Participants had to move different quantities of objects by hand (two at a time) or with a tool (four at a time). The tool was not within reach so participants had to get it before moving the objects. In Experiment 1, the task was performed in a real and an imagined situation. In Experiment 2, participants had to decide for each quantity, whether they preferred moving the objects by hand or with the tool. Our findings indicated that people perceive tool actions as less costly in terms of movement time than they actually are (Experiment 1) and decide to use a tool even when it objectively provides less time-based benefits than using the hands (Experiment 2). Taken together, the data suggest that people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use.     

Costs and benefits in hunter-gatherer punishment

Hunter-gatherer punishment involves costs and benefits to individuals and groups, but the costs do not necessarily fit with the assumptions made in models that consider punishment to be altruistic--which brings in the free-rider problem and the problem of second-order free-riders. In this commentary, I present foragers' capital punishment patterns ethnographically, in the interest of establishing whether such punishment is likely to be costly; and I suggest that in many cases abstentions from punishment that might be taken as defections by free-riders are actually caused by social-structural considerations rather than being an effect of free-rider genes. This presentation of data supplements the ethnographic analysis provided by Guala.     

Instruction in learning a temporal pattern on an anticipation-coincidence task

Using a computer-simulated anticipation-coincidence task, the main aim of the study was to examine the effect of the type of instruction on learning a temporal pattern. For this task, participants must learn to anticipate the appropriate time to launch a projectile to hit a moving target. The experiment involved three instructional conditions. In the Explicit-rule Discover Instruction Condition participants were informed that target speed could change from trial to trial and that change is controlled by a regular pattern. Their task was then to search, to identify, and to use such pattern to enhance their anticipation. In the Explicit-Informative Instruction Condition, participants were, however, allowed before practice to examine attentively the regular pattern. Participants were also explicitly urged to use the pattern they observed to ensure a better interception of the target. Finally, in the Implicit Instruction Condition, participants were only informed that their task was to hit, or at least, to place the projectile as near as possible to the target. No additional information was provied about the target's behaviour. Analysis indicated that learning the temporal pattern was more important in Implicit than in Explicit-rule Discover Instruction Condion. However, the Explicit-Informative Instruction Condition produced unambiguouslly the highest learning. Overall, the study highlights the role of information over guidance in the understanding of the effect of the instructions on learning. Finally, we discussed the implications of these results on the comprehension of the variability of the effects of the instruction on learning.     

Costs and benefits in perceptual categorization

Observers categorized perceptual stimuli when the category costs and benefits were manipulated across conditions, and costs were either zero or nonzero. The cost-benefit structures were selected so that performance across conditions was equivalent with respect to the optimal classifier. Each observer completed several blocks of trials in each of the experimental conditions, and a series of nested models was applied to the individual observer data from all conditions. In general, performance became more nearly optimal as observers gained experience with the cost-benefit structures, but performance reached asymptote at a suboptimal level. Observers behaved differently in the zero- and nonzero-cost conditions, performing consistently worse when costs were nonzero. A test of the hypothesis that observers weight costs more heavily than benefits was inconclusive. Some aspects of the data supported this differential weighting hypothesis, but others did not. Implications for current theories of cost-benefit learning are discussed.     

Semantic processing in an incidental learning task

Recent research on implicit learning has suggested that perceptual learning could account for the observed dissociation between task performance and associated verbal knowledge. We report three experiments that investigate whether performance in an incidental learning task is based on knowledge held primarily at a perceptual or a semantic level. The results indicate that, under the task conditions described, processing of the semantic content of the stimuli is an automatic process. The implications of this result for implicit learning are discussed.     

Discriminative taste aversion learning: a learning task for older chickens

The study of learning and memory using the chicken model has relied on three learning paradigms, passive avoidance learning, imprinting and the pebble floor task. Passive avoidance learning and imprinting have been used predominantly in very young chickens and cannot be used to access learning and memory in older chickens. We have established a new behavioural learning paradigm, Discriminative Taste Aversion Learning (DTAL), that can be used with both young and older animals. The task requires chickens to discriminate between food crumbs dyed either red or yellow with one colour being associated with the aversive tasting substance, methylanthranilate. Learning can be tested at various times after the training session by presenting chickens with the coloured food crumbs without an aversive taste. Both chickens tested at 5 and 15 days post-hatch learned to avoid the aversive crumbs. Furthermore, the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin (30 mM; 10 microl per hemisphere) injected into the intermediate medial hyperstriatum ventrale 15 min pre-training or 45 min post-training blocked long-term memory for the DTAL task when tested 24 h later. Memory for the task was unaffected by anisomycin injection 120 min post-training or in control animals injected with saline at similar times. The timing of the cellular processes of protein synthesis needed for consolidation of the DTAL appears to be similar to those described for the other behavioural paradigms in young chickens.     

Past midnight: Semantic processing in an implicit learning task

Four experiments are reported which examine the nature of representations underlying an implicit learning task. When shown a series of clock faces, each bearing a time between 6 and 12 o'clock, subjects subsequently show a selection preference for novel clock faces between these times. Furthermore, they show no signs of being aware of the underlying rule governing this preference. This effect is also present when the representation of time of day is changed from analogue to digital between learning and test. In the final experiment subjects show no preference for seen over unseen clocks between these critical times. These data suggest that, for this particular task, implicit learning involves abstract representations.     

Motivational orientations and task autonomy fit: effects on organizational attraction

The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is congruence between applicant needs (i.e., motivational orientations) and what is available (i.e., task autonomy) from an organizational perspective based on the fit between needs and supply. The fit between work motivation and task autonomy was examined to see whether it was associated with organizational attraction. This experimental study included two phases. Phase 1 participants consisted of 446 undergraduate students, of whom 228 were recruited to participate in Phase 2. The fit relations between task autonomy and intrinsic motivation and between task control and extrinsic motivation were characterized. Findings indicated that the fit between work motivation and task autonomy was positively associated with organizational attraction. Based on these results, it may be inferred that employers should emphasize job characteristics such as autonomy or control orientations to attract individuals, and focus on the most suitable work motivations for their organizations.     

The experimental task influences cue competition in human causal learning

Participants were shown A+ and C- trials followed by AB+ and CD+ trials. These trials were embedded in a causal learning task in which participants had to learn either the relationship between different foods and allergic reactions or the relationship between different stocks and an increase in the stock market index. The authors orthogonally varied the manner in which the different cues were presented to participants during training. Cue competition was related to the causal learning scenario but not to the manner in which the different cues were presented. These results question claims of a human bias toward configural processing that were based on difficulties in finding cue competition in some previous causal learning experiments.     

Autonomy,culture, and well-being: The benefits of inclusive autonomy

In an attempt to understand cultural variation in motivation, we distinguished between the type of motivation (ranging from controlled to autonomous, as conventionally measured) and the subject of motivation (“I” vs. “my family and I”), creating measures of individual and inclusive academic motivation. Support was found for three hypotheses. First, Chinese Canadian and Singaporean students felt less relative autonomy than European Canadian students, on both the inclusive and individual measures. Second, individual relative autonomy was associated with psychological well-being (WB) for European Canadians and Chinese Canadians (Study 1), and Singaporeans (Study 2). Third, inclusive relative autonomy was associated with psychological well-being for Chinese Canadians and Singaporeans, but not European Canadians. Exploratory analyses are also presented, and implications for the theory and measurement of autonomy are discussed.     

An experimental investigation of the effect of worry on responses to a discrimination learning task

The current study examined the impact of both the tendency to worry (trait worry) and the process of worry (state worry) on subsequent behavioral responding in a schedule discrimination learning task. High and low trait worriers were randomly assigned to a state worry or relaxation incubation condition and completed a test of executive functioning and a dual contingency learning task that utilized neutral discriminative cues over the course of 2 contingency phases. Although state and trait worry did not impact executive functioning, the state worry condition was associated with diminished sensitivity to learning task contingencies over the course of the first contingency learning trials in comparison to the relaxation condition. This relationship was unique to the state worry condition above and beyond shared variance with subjective anxiety level. Results suggest that state worry may lead to a decrement in selective behavioral responding to neutral discriminative cues in the environment. The findings suggest that the process of worry may lead to less adaptive responding to neutral cues and interfere with adaptive behaviors, which may thereby contribute to and maintain anxiety.