Observational Learning in Pigeons: The effects of Model Proficiency on Observer Performance

Observational learning of a successive visual discrimination problem by pigeons was studied using conspecifics as models performing at proficient or at nonproficient levels. During the observational period, observers were confined without response opportunity and were subsequently trained in the model's discriminative task. Significantly better performance in subsequent learning was found for observers of nonproficient models. In contrast, no significant differences in learning of the visual discrimination task were found between pigeons that observed proficient models and pigeons that had undergone only confinement in the observation apparatus or those trained without prior observation or confinement experience. The apparent paradox of less proficient models producing better learners may be related to the consequences of observing additional negative-stimulus responding per se or to observation of models' behavior changing from less proficient to more proficient with consequent improvement in reinforcement opportunity.     

Explicit Learning of a Dynamic System with a Non-salient Pattern

We examine the hypothesis that a specific goal leads to implicit learning, whereas a nonspecific goal leads to explicit learning, even though the pattern to be learnt is non-salient. Subjects learned a dynamic control task (Berry & Broadbent, 1984). One group of subjects had a specific control goal, the second group had a non-specific pattern-search goal, and the third group had both goals. On measures of learning (control performance, prediction, and general questions), the non-specific group learnt explicitly, outperforming the other two groups on all learning measures. The specific group performed next best on control performance and prediction questions but performed very poorly on general questions. The dual-goal group performed poorly on all measures. Non-specific subjects predicted well on both familiar and unfamiliar situations. Specific-goal subjects predicted well on familiar situations, regardless of whether their previous response had been correct or incorrect. Dual-goal subjects predicted well only on familiar correct situations. We conclude that the non-specific group learned through explicit hypothesis testing, the specific group learned through a mixture of explicit problem solving and implicit instance learning, and the dual-goal group learned instances. Results are discussed in terms of dual-space models of problem solving and hypothesis testing and in terms of implicit instance learning. We consider how the choice of learning goal affects the cognitive processes used during learning and suggest that having subjects learn the same information implicitly or explicitly is potentially useful for drawing clearer distinctions between implicit and explicit modes of learning.     

Observational Learning From Internal Feedback: A Simulation of an Adaptive Learning Method

Much natural learning occurs by observation without explicit feedback or tutoring, yet few models of learning address this class of tasks. Further, many natural cases of observational learning are complex, and efficient learning seems to demand strategic learning procedures. The present work adopts a design perspective and asks what learning mechanisms would be both useful and feasible for natural induction. Work on closely related learning problems is briefly reviewed and a model for observational rule learning is proposed and simulated. The model extends learning mechanisms developed for explicit learning with feedback to less structured, observational tasks. In particular, the focused sampling mechanism, which is an extension of the attentional learning procedure developed by Zeaman and House (1963), is introduced. The operation of an attentional learning procedure is less clear when extended to learning without feedback, so a simulation was done to evaluate the performance of the model. A series of simulated experiments were run, comparing performance of the learning model with and without the focused sampling component. We evaluated whether and when focused sampling benefits observational learning, investigated the effects of different distributions of systematic and unsystematic features, and compared observational learning to learning with feedback. Results of the simulation suggest that focused sampling does benefit learning, that benefit increases with the complexity of the learning task, and that learning with and learning without feedback exhibit differences in how each is affected by changes in the learning problem. Suggestions about the relation to human data are offered.     

Improving the quality of parental interaction with very low birth weight children: A longitudinal study using a Mediated Learning Experience model

Cognitive performance of 3-year-old, very low birth weight children (N = 42) was found to be more significantly related to the quality of parent-child interaction than to early measures of cognitive performance or measures of developmental risk such as birth weight and APGAR. The subjects were randomly divided into an intervention and a control group. The intervention group was visited at home, infrequently, by a mediator who identified basic criteria of quality of parent-child interaction and provided the parents with feedback on the quality of interaction with their own children. The intervention procedure continued for 7 months. The extent of a family's participation in the intervention varied depending upon the initial quality of parent-child interaction and the amount of time it took a family to reach criteria. Quality of parent-child interaction and children's cognitive performance were pretested and reassessed 3 years after the intervention. The sample was reduced to 29 due to attrition over time. Parental behavior following the intervention had changed significantly with respect to all criteria. Parents who had received intervention, as compared to the control group parents, provided their children with more behaviors related to focusing attention, exciting and rewarding, expanding children's understanding of the world around them, preplanning and regulating behavior. Three years after the relatively unintensive intervention, parents continued to show significant gains in quality of mediation. Differences were found between parents of Small for Gestational Age (SGA) and Appropriate for Gestational Age (AGA) children in favor of the SGA group. In children's cognitive performance, scores of the intervention group on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were significantly higher than those of the control group. On other cognitive measures, a consistent trend in favor of the intervention group was noted. More children in the control as compared to the experimental group were rated by their parents as having difficulties with language, fine motor, and sociability skills 3 years after the intervention.     

中学生自主学习的教学指导模式研究

国内外业已开发出众多旨在培养中学生自主学习的教学模式,基于理论和教学经验分析,我们概括出中学生自主学习教学指导的一般模式,本研究以330名中学生为被试,分别在初中和高中的若干学科对这一教学模式进行检验。结果显示,自主学习的一般教学模式能够在一定程度上增强中学生的自主学习能力,提高中学生的学习成绩,能够为任课教师接受和掌握,具有广泛的适用性。     

Conceptions of Ability Affect Motor Learning

ABSTRACT

The authors examined the effects of induced conceptions of ability on motor learning. Participants in 3 groups practiced a balance task after receiving instructions suggesting that the task would reflect an inherent ability (IA group), represent an acquirable skill (AS group), or no ability-related instructions (control group). Across 2 days of practice, the AS and IA groups showed greater improvement in performance compared with the control group. For the retention test on Day 3, the AS group tended to demonstrate generally more effective balance performance than the control group and increasingly greater effectiveness compared with the IA group. Moreover, AS group participants made higher-frequency (reflexive) movement adjustments than participants of the other 2 groups, indicating a greater automaticity in the control of their movements. Thus, learning was enhanced by instructions portraying the task as a learnable skill, rather than revealing a fixed inherent capacity or no instructions (control group).     

Learning and transfer from a simple dynamic system

The amount of learning gained from being assisted in completing the task of bringing a predator-prey system into equilibrium by controlling the predator population was investigated. Learning was explored both by post-task questioning and by testing for transfer to another predator-prey task. Participants were 28 undergraduate psychology students, all female. They were randomly and evenly split into an experiment group that was subjected to a learning session with the first task before being tested in the second task, and a control group that only performed the second task. What was most needed in the first task was help in sticking to analytically derived conclusions by resisting "common sense" responses. There was a significant transfer effect on performance to the second task, stemming from learning shown by half the participants in the experiment group. The other half showed hardly any learning. Learning in about half the subjects has proven a stable finding.     

Auditory Model Enhances Relative-Timing Learning

In recent experiments (Q. Lai, C. H. Shea, & M. Little, 2000; C. H. Shea, G. Wulf, J. Park, & B. Gaunt, 2001), auditory models were found to be effective in enhancing relative-timing performance and learning in constant practice conditions. In the present experiment, the authors examined (a) whether an auditory model also enhances relative-timing learning in blocked and random practice conditions and (b) whether experience with the auditory model enhances participants' ability to produce the response by using different effector sequences. Participants (N = 48) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 acquisition conditions in which an auditory model was or was not present and the practice schedule was blocked or random. In the acquisition phase, all participants alternately pressed 2 keys on a keyboard in an attempt to match 5 goal intervals. In the auditory model conditions, a sequence of tones was played before each acquisition trial. The tones represented the correct timing sequence for that trial. One retention and 3 effector-transfer tests without feedback were administered about 24 hr after the completion of acquisition. The results indicated that the auditory model enhanced relative-timing performance and learning independently of practice schedule. In addition, the auditory model enhanced relative timing on the effector-transfer tests, but absolute-timing performance and learning were not affected by the auditory model. Thus, relative timing was found to be effector independent but absolute timing was not.     

Haptic Guidance Can Enhance Motor Learning of a Steering Task

Haptic guidance can improve the immediate performance of a motor task by enforcing a desired pattern of kinematics, but several studies have found that it impairs motor learning. In this study, we studied whether guidance from a robotic steering wheel can improve one's short-term learning of steering a simulated vehicle. We developed a computer algorithm that adapted the firmness of the guidance based on ongoing error. Training with "guidance-as-needed" or "fixed guidance" allowed participants to learn to steer without experiencing large errors and produced slightly better immediate retention than did training without guidance, apparently because participants were better able to learn when to initiate turns. Training with guidance-as-needed produced slightly better results than training with fixed guidance: the guidance-as-needed participants' errors were significantly smaller when guidance was removed. However, this difference quickly dissipated with more practice. We conclude that haptic guidance can benefit short-term learning of a steering-type task while also limiting performance errors during training.     

An exploratory study of the kinematics of girls with Turner Syndrome in a visuo‐motor task

In this paper a study is reported in which a group of children with Turner Syndrome (TS) is compared on motor performance tests and real‐time kinematic data with a control group. The objective of this study was to identify possible kinematic variables that characterize the movement patterns utilized by this group of children in achieving their optimal performance. The underlying idea is that by comparing test results and movement kinematics one might gain more insight into the movement production of children than by just looking at the test results or by just using clinical movement observation. The children performed a pen and paper task, the flower trail (one of the sub‐tests of the Movement ABC) (Henderson and Sugden, 1992), on an XY‐tablet. We explored kinematic variables, such as trajectory length, movement time, velocity and pen pressure. It was found that, although girls with TS have a severe motor deficit, they are able to draw a line accurately between two narrow boundaries just as well as the control children (no significant difference in mean number of spatial errors). However, quantitative analysis revealed that girls with TS made a large amount of deviations from the optimal path such that their trajectory length increased with more than 10% per flower trail compared to the control group children. They also made more pen lifts and more changes in velocity. The study showed that children from the two groups may reach the same basic accuracy performance level by using very different strategies. Kinematic registration of fine motor tasks holds promise in gaining more insight into how clinical groups cope with their specific motor problems. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

学习困难青少年认知控制特点研究

本研究基于双重认知控制理论,通过比较学困组和对照组在持续性操作任务上的表现来探究学习困难青少年的认知控制特点。结果发现：（1）在反应性控制的指标上,学困组和对照组的反应时和正确率不存在显著差异,但学困组对探测刺激的辨别力指数更低,显示学困组的反应性控制能力存在一定不足;（2）在主动性控制的指标上,学困组的反应时更长、正确率更低,且对线索刺激的辨别力指数更低,显示学困组在对线索刺激保持的各项指标上都比对照组更差,说明学困组在主动性控制上的缺陷更为明显。     

Learning to perceive object unity: a connectionist account

To explore questions of how human infants begin to perceive partly occluded objects, we devised two connectionist models of perceptual development. The models were endowed with an existing ability to detect several kinds of visual information that have been found important in infants’ and adults’ perception of object unity (motion, co‐motion, common motion, relatability, parallelism, texture and T‐junctions). They were then presented with stimuli consisting of either one or two objects and an occluding screen. The models’ task was to determine whether the object or objects were joined when such a percept was ambiguous, after specified amounts of training with events in which a subset of possible visual information was provided. The model that was trained in an enriched environment achieved superior levels of performance and was able to generalize veridical percepts to a wide range of novel stimuli. Implications for perceptual development in humans, current theories of development and origins of knowledge are discussed.     

Electroconvulsive Shock and the Learning of Visual Patterns

The influence of peer models on the modification of impulsive response styles among fourth and sixth grade boys and girls was experimentally investigated. Sociometrically chosen peers were trained to provide reflective verbal and behavioral cues in responding to a selected task. They later performed these skills in the presence of a peer observer. A comparison of posttest performance measures of peer observers with control subjects revealed significant increases in response latencies and decreases in error scores among children exposed to peer models.     

Processes That Mediate the Relationship Between a Group Goal and Group Member Performance

The impact of a group goal on the performance of anonymous and nonin- teracting group members performing an additive group task was tested. Pro- cesses believed to mediate the effect, the role of self-set individual goals, the impact of information about the group's previous performance on the task (group knowledge of results; GRPKR) on goal commitment, and the motiva- tional basis of the goal were also assessed. Seventeen groups of three to five people performed two trials of an idea generation task. In the GOAL/GRPKR condition, group members were assigned a group goal for Session 2 and received information about the group's performance for Session 1. In the goal without knowledge of results (GOAL/NOKR) condition, group mem- bers were assigned a group goal for Session 2 without GRPKR. In the NO- GOAL condition, group members worked without a goal and without GRPKR. In each condition, group members worked on the task without talk- ing to other group members and individual contributions to the group prod- uct were unknown to others. Self-reports of effort, changes in individual performance strategies from Rial 1 to Rial 2, self-set individual goals, goal commitment, and personal challenge were collected. Results showed that (a) group members working toward a performance goal outperformed those working without a goal, b) information about the group's previous perfor- mance on the task did not influence commitment to the goal or performance, (c) changes in individual performance strategies mediated the group goal ef- fect but self-reports of effort invested in the task did not, (d) g m ~ p members working toward a group goal felt more personal challenge than group mem- bers working without a goal, and (e) self-set individual goals can not account for the group goal effect. The implications of these results for models of group goals and group performance are discussed.     

Physical and Observational Practice Afford Unique Learning Opportunities

In 2 experiments, the authors studied the effectiveness of physical and observational practice on learning and the effect on learning of combining physical practice and observation, as compared with providing physical practice alone. In Experiment 1, retention and transfer performance of 30 university students after physical, observational, or no practice were contrasted. Consistent with findings from other studies, the retention results indicated that observational practice is inferior to physical practice. The transfer data indicated no differences between observation and physical practice groups. In Experiment 2, retention and transfer performance of 30 participants in physical and combined (alternating physical and observational) practice groups were contrasted. The retention results showed no differences between the combined and physical practice groups, but the combined group performed significantly better than the physical practice group on the transfer test. Those findings suggest that a combination of observation and physical practice permits unique opportunities for learning beyond those available via either practice regimen alone.     

Unidirectional Mazes for Studying Human Learning

The purpose of this study was to determine if academic performance affects locus of control scores. Twenty-one college students were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group by sex. The treatment group received mnemonic training enabling them to score better than the control group. The treatment group had significantly more internal scores than the control group with the Rotter Locus of Control Scale but not with the Nowicki-Strickland I-E Scale.     

知道与不知道要学多少：类别学习中样例量的预期作用

采用“5/4模型”类别结构探讨了类别学习中样例量的预期作用。设置了两种学习条件(“知道样例量”和“不知道样例量”), 分别探讨两种学习条件下的学习效率、学习策略以及所形成的类别表征。106名大学生参加了实验, 结果表明：在类别学习中, 样例量的预期作用显著, 知道样例量组的学习效率高于不知道样例量组; 样例量的预期作用对类别学习效率的影响是通过影响学习过程中使用的策略来实现的; 样例量的预期作用不影响两种学习条件的学习后形成的类别表征, 且两种学习条件的被试自始至终表现出样例学习的表征模式。     

Exploring the dynamics of design fluency in children with and without ADHD using artificial neural networks

The neuropsychology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been extensively studied, with a general focus on global performance measures of executive function. In this study, we compared how global (i.e., endpoint) versus process (i.e., dynamic) measures of performance may help characterize children with and without ADHD using a design fluency task as a case study. The secondary goal was to compare the sensitivity of standard versus connectionist statistical models to group differences in cognitive data. Thirty-four children diagnosed with ADHD and 37 children without ADHD aged 8–11 years old were tested on the Five-Point Test. The continuous process measure of performance, indexed as the number of produced designs at each consecutive 1 minute interval during 5 minutes, was analyzed against the discrete process measure, that is, the number of designs between first and last intervals and the standard global performance measure of total number of produced designs. Results show that the continuous process measure distinguished the two groups better than the two other measures. The detailed observation of production patterns revealed a decreasing linear trajectory in children without ADHD that contrasts with the flat, but fluctuating productivity pattern of children with ADHD. With regards to the second goal, results show that the connectionist and standard methods are equally sensitive to group differences for the three types of measures. This illustrates the utility of quantitative process measures together with the connectionist method in neuropsychological research and suggests great potential for a dynamical approach to cognition.     

Eye movements are not a prerequisite for learning movement sequence timing through observation

The present experiment examined learning of a three-segment movement sequence using physical or observational practice, and whether permitting eye movements to be made during observation is a prerequisite for learning such a movement sequence. Specifically, participants were required to move a mouse cursor through a three-segment movement sequence in order to satisfy one of three movement time goals (800, 1000, 1200 ms). A yoked-participant design was used in which a physical practice group acted as a learning model, which was viewed simultaneously by two groups that carried out different observational practice procedures. An observation group was permitted to move their eyes whilst observing the model, whereas the fixation group was instructed to maintain fixation on a central target. The difference between pre-test and post-test data indicated that all the three experimental groups significantly altered their timing accuracy, variability and movement kinematics over practice, while the control group’s behaviour was unchanged. These data indicate that movement time as well as the underlying movement control was learned following observation of a movement with or without an explicit contribution from eye movements, albeit to a lesser extent during the final segment of the sequence when compared to the physical practice group. The implication is that while similar processes might normally be involved in physical and observational practice, information afforded by eye movements during observation (e.g., efference copy and eye proprioception) is not necessary for movement sequence learning.     

Learning with microcomputers: Training primary school children on a problem-solving program

This study investigated the effects of structured training at two informational levels on children's performance on a problem-solving computer program. An informed-training group (strategy training with detailed explanations) performed at a superior level to a blind-training group (strategy training with no explanations) and a control group. This superiority was maintained 3 weeks later on retest. The results are discussed in relation to the processes that mediate and facilitate training.