When a Lot of Knowledge Is a Dangerous Thing The Debilitating Effects of Plan Complexity on Verbal Fluency

Three experiments examined the relationships among plan complexity, access to planned actions, and verbal fluency while pursuing a persuasion goal. Consistent with theoretical expectations, complex planners were less fluent than less complex planners under high access conditions. Persons whose access was raised were less fluent than those whose access was not raised. A second experiment showed that reduced fluency was not induced by lowering of self-confidence. The third experiment replicated the findings of the second experiment and demonstrated that the questioning procedure used to raise access in the first two experiments produced increases in plan complexity as suggested by theory. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the study of strategic communication.     

Perceptual learning in maze discriminations

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a discrimination between rubber- and sandpaper-covered arms of a maze after one group had been pre-exposed to these intra-maze cues. Pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made easier by adding further discriminative stimuli, when it now significantly retarded learning. In Experiment 2, rats were trained on an extra-maze spatial discrimination, again after one group, but not another, had been pre-exposed to the extra-maze landmarks. Here too, pre-exposure facilitated subsequent discrimination learning, unless the discrimination was made substantially easier by arranging that the two arms between which rats had to choose were always separated by 135°. The results of both experiments can be explained by supposing that perceptual learning depends on the presence of features common to S+ and S-.