Explaining change in psychology: The road not taken

I wish to express sincere thanks to the following persons who have given me the benefit of their comments and criticisms: Anthony S. Bryk, Renford Bamreough, Simon Blackburn, David Bloor, Jeremy Butterfield, Edward Craig, Jerry A. Fodor, Robert P. Gordon, P.M.S. Hacker, David Hansen, D.W. Hamlyn, Philip W. Jackson, Anthony Kenny, Peggy J. Miller, and Robert J. Richards. In addition, I gratefully acknowledge the support I received from a Spencer Seed Grant, University of Chicago, which allowed me to go to England in the summer of 1985 and discuss a version of this work with colleagues. Finally, I owe thanks to Benton Center for Curriculum and Instruction, University of Chicago, for various support services.     

Delayed choice responding by pigeons when the correct response is not predictable from the sample stimulus.

Food-deprived pigeons were presented with a row of four response keys situated above a grain hopper aperture. At the start of a trial, three of four keys were randomly selected and illuminated white for six seconds. After a variable blackout period, one of the three previously white keys and the previously dark key were illuminated green, and the remaining white keys were reilluminated as before. A response to the green key that was previously white was reinforced with three-second access to gain, a response to any other key resulted in a three-second blackout and the start of a new trial. Five of six subjects responded to the correct green key more often than chance at an interstimulus interval of 1.5 seconds, and they displayed maximal performance at different intertrial interval values ranging from 15 to 60 seconds. Choice accuracy decreased for all but one subject as the interstimulus interval was increased. For the range of interstimulus interval durations employed, decrements in choice accuracy were qualitatively similar to, but lower than those typically obtained from, delayed-matching-to-sample or delayed-pair comparison procedures.     

The social construction of gender

The categories provided by the language of our culture give us a meaning-making framework that guides our perception of the world. This paper views the process of categorizing people from a constructivist perspective. It argues that many categories such as race, nationality, homosexuality, and gender are arbitrary social constructions created to fill some human purpose based on sociopolitical rather than biological or natural considerations. Similarity among people may arise from a history of being in the same category rather than being the basis for categorization. Whereas people are attached to categories that shape their identity and unite with other persons from similar categories to fight for their rights, they should also envisage the possibility of revising these arbitrary categories.     

Compétence cognitive,capacités d'apprentissage,et métacognition

Suite à la recension de travaux empiriques sur l'entraînement cognitif, sur l'évaluation de la zone de développement proximal et sur le développement de l'expertise, les auteurs mettent en lumière l'existence d'une relation entre la qualité des efforts fournis au moment de l'apprentissage de connaissances ou de stratégies nouvelles et les performances cognitives ultérieures des individus. Plus particulièrement, les auteurs posent l'hypothèse que les individus doués intellectuellement seraient caractérisés surtout par l'efficacité de leurs stratégies d'apprentissage, lesquelles leur permettraient d'acquérir des connaissances et des habiletés nouvelles plus rapidement que leurs pairs et de transférer plus souvent ces acquisitions à des domaines nouveaux. L'interprétation des données sur l'apprentissage dans un cadre théorique métacognitif suggère que les capacités supérieures d'apprentissage des individus doués intellectuellement, comparativement à leurs pairs de compétences moyennes, seraient le résultat de l'utilisation spontanée de mécanismes autorégulateurs adéquats. Peu de travaux empiriques ont vérifié cette hypothèse d'une supériorité métacognitive des individus doués intellectuellement associée à des habiletés d'apprentissage plus développées. Les quelques résultats disponibles favorisent toutefois cette interprétation. Pour terminer, les auteurs discutent des implications pédagogiques qui découlent d'un modèle de la compétence cognitive où les habiletés métacognitives et les habiletés d'apprentissage interagissent pour favoriser l'émergence de l'autonomie intellectuelle.     

Three- and four-year-olds spontaneously use others' past performance to guide their learning

A wealth of human knowledge is acquired by attending to information provided by other people – but some people are more credible sources than others. In two experiments, we explored whether young children spontaneously keep track of an individual’s history of being accurate or inaccurate and use this information to facilitate subsequent learning. We found that 3- and 4-year-olds favor a previously accurate individual when learning new words and learning new object functions and applied the principle of mutual exclusivity to the newly learned words but not the newly learned functions. These findings expand upon previous research in a number of ways, most importantly by showing that (a) children spontaneously keep track of an individual’s history and use it to guide subsequent learning without any prompting, and (b) children’s sensitivity to others’ prior accuracy is not specific to the domain of language.     

The effects of simulated stuttering and prolonged speech on the neural activation patterns of stuttering and nonstuttering adults

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the neural correlates of passive listening, habitual speech and two modified speech patterns (simulated stuttering and prolonged speech) in stuttering and nonstuttering adults. Within-group comparisons revealed increased right hemisphere biased activation of speech-related regions during the simulated stuttered and prolonged speech tasks, relative to the habitual speech task, in the stuttering group. No significant activation differences were observed within the nonstuttering participants during these speech conditions. Between-group comparisons revealed less left superior temporal gyrus activation in stutterers during habitual speech and increased right inferior frontal gyrus activation during simulated stuttering relative to nonstutterers. Stutterers were also found to have increased activation in the left middle and superior temporal gyri and right insula, primary motor cortex and supplementary motor cortex during the passive listening condition relative to nonstutterers. The results provide further evidence for the presence of functional deficiencies underlying auditory processing, motor planning and execution in people who stutter, with these differences being affected by speech manner.     

Cognitive changes in pregnancy: mild decline or societal stereotype?

This research compared pregnant and non‐pregnant women's perceptions of cognitive change and their performance on 13 sensitive memory and attention tasks (Study 1) and two complex driving simulation tasks (Study 2). The pregnant, but not the non‐pregnant, women rated their cognitive abilities as worse than before, but only two performance measures from Study 1 differentiated the two groups (speed of language processing and attentional switching). Study 3 examined beliefs about pregnancy‐related cognitive decline. Women and men with and without immediate experience of pregnancy rated pregnant women's cognitive abilities as slightly worse than before pregnancy. Memory ratings were worse from women and from those with immediate experience of pregnancy. It is concluded that there may be some mild effects of pregnancy on performance of some specific cognitive functions but that cultural expectations based on a stereotype of cognitive decline also contribute to pregnant women's perception of cognitive change. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The threat of appearing prejudiced and race-based attentional biases

The current work tested whether external motivation to respond without prejudice toward Blacks is associated with biased patterns of selective attention that reflect a threat response to Black individuals. In a dot-probe attentional bias paradigm, White participants with low and high external motivation to respond without prejudice toward Blacks (i.e., low-EM and high-EM individuals, respectively) were presented with pairs of White and Black male faces that bore either neutral or happy facial expressions; on each trial, the faces were displayed for either 30 ms or 450 ms. The findings were consistent with those of previous research on threat and attention: High-EM participants revealed an attentional bias toward neutral Black faces presented for 30 ms, but an attentional bias away from neutral Black faces presented for 450 ms. These attentional biases were eliminated, however, when the faces displayed happy expressions. These findings suggest that high levels of external motivation to avoid prejudice result in anxious arousal in response to Black individuals, and that this response affects even basic attentional processes.     

Voice processing in monkey and human brains

Studies in humans have indicated that the anterior superior temporal sulcus has an important role in the processing of information about human voices, especially the identification of talkers from their voice. A new study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with macaques provides strong evidence that anterior auditory fields, part of the auditory 'what' pathway, preferentially respond to changes in the identity of conspecifics, rather than specific vocalizations from the same individual.     

Working memory in children: a time-constrained functioning similar to adults

Within the time-based resource-sharing (TBRS) model, we tested a new conception of the relationships between processing and storage in which the core mechanisms of working memory (WM) are time constrained. However, our previous studies were restricted to adults. The current study aimed at demonstrating that these mechanisms are present and functional before adulthood. For this purpose, we investigated the effect on maintenance of the duration of the attentional capture induced by processing. In two experiments using computer-paced WM span tasks, 10-year-olds were asked to maintain letters while performing spatial location judgments. The duration of this processing was manipulated by varying either the discriminability between target locations or the contrast between targets and background. In both experiments, longer processing times resulted in poorer recall, as we observed previously in adults. These findings suggest that the core mechanisms of WM described by the TBRS model are already settled during childhood.