Explanation and verbalization in a computer-assisted search task

Three experiments examine the effects of two different forms of explanation on assisted performance on a complex search task. The task involves determining which of a set of factories is responsible for polluting a river by testing the river for the presence or absence of various pollutants. All subjects receive computer suggestions as to which pollutants they should test for. In addition, some subjects receive an explanation of the principle according to which the advice program works. Two forms of explanation are compared. Experiment 1 shows that subjects who are allowed to ask “why” each computer recommendation is made perform significantly better than those who are provided with a block text of explanation at the start of each trial. Experiment 2 shows that the latter type of explanation is not completely ineffective, however. Subjects who are required to verbalize following the single explanation perform significantly better than do subjects who are required to verbalize but who have not received any form of explanation. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that subjects who receive the multiple “why” explanations or the explanation/verbalization combination maintain a superior performance level on subsequent unaided trials.     

Quantifying latent social motivation and its associations with joint attention and language in infants at high and low likelihood for autism spectrum disorder

Social motivation—the psychobiological predisposition for social orienting, seeking social contact, and maintaining social interaction—manifests in early infancy and is hypothesized to be foundational for social communication development in typical and atypical populations. However, the lack of infant social-motivation measures has hindered delineation of associations between infant social motivation, other early-arising social abilities such as joint attention, and language outcomes. To investigate how infant social motivation contributes to joint attention and language, this study utilizes a mixed longitudinal sample of 741 infants at high (HL = 515) and low (LL = 226) likelihood for ASD. Using moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA), we incorporated items from parent-report measures to establish a novel latent factor model of infant social motivation that exhibits measurement invariance by age, sex, and familial ASD likelihood. We then examined developmental associations between 6- and 12-month social motivation, joint attention at 12–15 months, and language at 24 months of age. On average, greater social-motivation growth from 6–12 months was associated with greater initiating joint attention (IJA) and trend-level increases in sophistication of responding to joint attention (RJA). IJA and RJA were both positively associated with 24-month language abilities. There were no additional associations between social motivation and future language in our path model. These findings substantiate a novel, theoretically driven approach to modeling social motivation and suggest a developmental cascade through which social motivation impacts other foundational skills. These findings have implications for the timing and nature of intervention targets to support social communication development in infancy.

Highlights

• We describe a novel, theoretically based model of infant social motivation wherein multiple parent-reported indicators contribute to a unitary latent social-motivation factor.
• Analyses revealed social-motivation factor scores exhibited measurement invariance for a longitudinal sample of infants at high and low familial ASD likelihood.
• Social-motivation growth from ages 6–12 months is associated with better 12−15-month joint attention abilities, which in turn are associated with greater 24-month language skills.
• Findings inform timing and targets of potential interventions to support healthy social communication in the first year of life.

     

The use of a coping strategy focused support group for carers of dementia sufferers

The paper describes the development and evaluation of coping strategy focused courses for informal carers of dementia sufferers (The Ways of Coping Course). Carers who attended the courses were interviewed before, immediately after and three months later, measuring their coping strategies, level of depression and strain, knowledge concerning dementia and satisfaction with the courses. They were compared to a second group of carers who attended educationally-focused courses consisting of a series of seminars on dementia. Both groups showed a signijicant increase in problem focused and decrease in distancing coping strategies but no change in levels of depression or strain. The carers in the Ways of Coping group showed an increase in acting out behaviour immediately following the courses and also showed greater levels of satisfaction with the courses overall.     

The role of action in implicit learning

This study looks at whether or not a crucial role is played by the learner's own actions in tasks known to give rise to implicit learning. Experiment 1 shows that experience of watching another person controlling Berry and Broadbent's (1984) sugar production and person interaction tasks has no effect on subsequent control performance. Experiment 2 demonstrates that this lack of effect of observing is limited to tasks where the underlying relationship is not obvious or salient. In Experiment 3 the length of the observation period is doubled, but this still has no beneficial effect on subsequent control performance. Experiments 4 and 5 address the question of what it is about controlling itself that leads to learning. They examine whether it is the decision-making component or the physical interaction component that is important. The results emphasize the importance of the role of action in learning to control these tasks. They show that decision must be tied to action in order to be maximally effective, at least in the early stages of learning.     

Memory for sentences: The subject superiority effect

Three experiments are reported on subject noun superiority in cued recall from S-V-O sentences. In Experiment I surface subjects were superior cues across a wide variety of conditions when the order of nouns/pronouns was matched in sentences and probes. The effect was less clear-cut in Experiment II, when cues and responses were confined to single key words.

The final experiment showed that cue superiority depends on the cue which subjects learn to use in retrieving information from sentences, and can be reversed by brief training. Several other aspects of the results, including a contrast in recall and recognition patterns, suggest that subject cue superiority results from the way subjects process remembered sentences rather than from memory trace structure. It is suggested that failure to control the utilisation of cues for memory retrieval may account for the sometimes elusive nature of the subject superiority effect.     

Negative Correlations between Control Performance and Verbalizable Knowledge: Indicators for Implicit Learning in Process Control Tasks?

Negative correlations between task performance in dynamic control tasks and verbalizable knowledge, as assessed by a post-task questionnaire, have been interpreted as dissociations that indicate two antagonistic modes of learning, one being “explicit”, the other “implicit”. This paper views the control tasks as finite-state automata and offers an alternative interpretation of these negative correlations. It is argued that “good controllers” observe fewer different state transitions and, consequently, can answer fewer post-task questions about system transitions than can “bad controllers”. Two experiments demonstrate the validity of the argument by showing the predicted negative relationship between control performance and the number of explored state transitions, and the predicted positive relationship between the number of explored state transitions and questionnaire scores. However, the experiments also elucidate important boundary conditions for the critical effects. We discuss the implications of these findings, and of other problems arising from the process control paradigm, for conclusions about implicit versus explicit learning processes.