Discrimination learning in a foraging situation

Rats were allowed to forage in a simulated natural environment made up of eight food sources (patches) each containing a fixed number of pellets. Two of the eight contained an extra supply of peanuts. The peanut patches were signaled by an olfactory/visual cue located at the bottom of the ladder leading to the patch. In successive phases the number of sessions per day, height of the patches, and availability of peanuts were manipulated. Subjects showed evidence of discrimination learning under these conditions, although the degree of discriminatory behavior varied as a function of environmental manipulations. Assessment of behavior within foraging sessions showed that subjects systematically changed their patterns of utilization of patches across time. Sampling or exploration, as well as food reinforcement, seem implicated in these results.     

Units of analysis and kinetic structure of behavioral repertoires

It is suggested that molar streams of behavior are constructed of various arrangements of three elementary constituents (elicited, evoked, and emitted response classes). An eight-cell taxonomy is elaborated as a framework for analyzing and synthesizing complex behavioral repertoires based on these functional units. It is proposed that the local force binding functional units into a smoothly articulated kinetic sequence arises from temporally arranged relative response probability relationships. Behavioral integration is thought to reflect the joint influence of the organism's hierarchy of relative response probabilities, fluctuating biological states, and the arrangement of environmental and behavioral events in time.     

BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract. The sciences may be conceptualized as a hierarchy ranked by level of organization (e.g., many-body physics ranks above particle physics). Each science serves as an antidiscipline for the science above it; that is, between each pair, tense but creative interplay is inevitable. Biology has advanced through such tension between its subdisciplines and now can serve as an antidiscipline for the social sciences—for anthropology, for example, by examining the connection between cultural and biological evolution; for psychology, by addressing the nature of learning and the structure of the unconscious; for economics, by examining economically irrational behavior and by comparing economic activity in humans and other species. Sociology, concerned mainly with advanced literate societies, is relatively remote from the genetic basis of human social behavior. However, moving between biological and social levels of organization generates richness and points to new and unexpected principles.     

Effects of active student response during error correction on the acquisition and maintenance of geography facts by elementary students with learning disabilities

An alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of Active Student Response (ASR) error correction and No Response (NR) error correction during instruction of the capitals of states and countries. Three students with learning disabilities were provided one-to-one daily instruction on four sets of 14 unknown capitals (7 ASR capitals and 7 NR capitals). Student errors during instruction on ASR capitals were immediately followed by the teacher stating the capital and the student repeating it (an active student response). Errors on NR capitals were immediately followed by the teacher stating the capital while the student visually attended to a geography card with the correct capital handwritten on it (an on-task response). During instruction each of the three students correctly stated more capitals taught with ASR instruction than he or she stated with NR error correction. Results of same-day and next-day tests show that all three students learned more capitals with ASR error correction than with NR error correction The students also correctly stated more ASR error correction capitals on 1-week maintenance tests.     

Relative sensitivity of the mutual exclusivity and novel-name-nameless category assumptions

The mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption states that children affix a novel label to only one unfamiliar object, while the novel-name-nameless category (N3C) assumption states that children affix a novel label to multiple unfamiliar objects. To compare the relative sensitivity of the two assumptions, two types of tasks, with two trials in each, were given to 5-year-olds. In the first trial of each task, all children selected only the unfamiliar object for a novel label, which was consistent with the ME assumption. For the task which did not have the same unfamiliar object in the two trials, 94% of the children selected the object with the same shape but black-white reversed image in the second trial, which was consistent with the N3C assumption. For the task which had the same unfamiliar object in the two trials, 43% of the children selected the same object in the second trial, which was consistent with the ME assumption, and 48% of them selected the object with the same shape but reversed image, which was consistent with the N3C assumption. The findings suggest that the ME and N3C assumptions can be flexibly applied to children's word learning.     

Brain dynamics,psychophysiological uncertainty and behavioral learning

The present paper takes a first step toward the integration of recent findings on brain dynamics and learning into established fields of psychophysiological science. Leading-edge studies of brain dynamics have shown that the brain manifests an inherent variability and that, when new stimuli (i.e., “problems”) are presented to the organism, brain chaos increases.     

Role of the striatal cholinergic system in the regulation of learned manipulation in rats

The experiments were performed on adult Wistar male rats trained to push with the forepaw on a fixed piston inside a narrow tube. It was found that after localized intracerebral injection of a cholinergic antagonist into the dorso-lateral (but not medial) neostriatum (i.e., the caudato-putamen) the behavioral performance requiring brief innate movements remained unchanged, but the performance requiring a prolonged pushing movement (> 50 msec) became disrupted. Microinjection of carbacholine (0.03-3 μ g/1 μ1) did not affect the performance of the acquired movements, whereas scopolamine (3 μ g/1 μ1) led to the significant decrease in pushing time. We conclude that changes in the state of the dorso-lateral neostriatal cholinergic system result only in disturbances of the sensory-controlled component of a complex instrumental movement. The 1994 Pavlovian Society Young Investigator Awardee was Nadezda Dubrovskaya, first author of this paper, which was presented at the annual meeting of the Pavlovian Society, July 3, 1994, in Prague, Czech Republic.     

Improving the spelling performance of students with disabilities

The present study examined the effects of an error correction strategy on the spelling accuracy of students with emotional and/or learning disabilities. The strategy, which asked students to spell a word, view a correct model, and then correct their errors, was compared to a traditional strategy that asked students to write words three times each while viewing a correct model. Results showed that students learned more words in the error correction condition than in the traditional condition. The error correction treatment was shown to be an effective strategy that reduced the number of repetitive spelling practice trials, and was preferred by students.