How big is this sound? Crossmodal association between pitch and size in infants

We examined 4- and 6-month-old infants’ sensitivity to the perceptual association between pitch and object size. Crossmodal correspondence effects were observed in 6-month-old infants but not in younger infants, suggesting that experience and/or further maturation is needed to fully develop this crossmodal association.     

Purposive behaviour in cognition and perception: Considerations of awareness in memory

The responses to the original article by Rönnberg (1990a) provoked interesting and thoughtful points of view that are covered by Gärling (1990), Hjelmquist (1990), Montgomery (1991), and Runeson (1990). These articles do not merely present a different outlook but also provide concepts that are certainly worthy of consideration and add more substance to the general topic under discussion. The purpose of this commentary is to seek an understanding of the ideas presented by the above authors within a synthesis of our views of current conceptualizations in cognition and perception. Each of the original criteria (Rönnberg, 1990a) will be treated in turn.     

The role of observing and attention in establishing stimulus control.

Early theorists (Skinner, Spence) interpreted discrimination learning in terms of the strengthening of the response to one stimulus and its weakening to the other. But this analysis does not account for the increasing independence of the two performances as training continues or for increases in control by dimensions of a stimulus other than the one used in training. Correlation of stimuli with different densities of reinforcement produces an increase in the behavior necessary to observe them, and greater observing of and attending to the relevant stimuli may account for the increase in control by these stimuli. The observing analysis also encompasses errorless training, and the selective nature of observing explains the feature-positive effect and the relatively shallow gradients of generalization generated by negative discriminative stimuli. The effectiveness of the observing analysis in handling these special cases adds to the converging lines of evidence supporting its integrative power and thus its validity.     

An infrared system for the detection of a pigeon''s pecks at alphanumeric characters on a TV screen: the dependency of letter detection on the predictability of one letter by another.

Three pigeons pecked at letters of the alphabet and at the symbol "?" displayed on a computer-driven cathode ray screen. A 4 by 4 matrix of infrared emitting and detecting diodes and associated circuitry identified the location of a pigeon''s responses to the screen. Responses at the target letter T were probabilistically reinforced with food whenever T appeared in a string of three letters in the middle of the screen. Responses at the symbol "?" appearing below this string were probabilistically reinforced whenever T did not appear. The letter F anywhere in the three-character string either strongly predicted the occurrence of the target letter T, in two conditions, or predicted its nonoccurrence, in a third. This manipulation of the frequency with which the familiar letter F predicted T was shown to change the function relating probability of a correct peck at the symbol "?" to the number of Fs in the string. This effect may be interpreted as an instance of the phenomenon where an organism''s acquired knowledge changes what it sees.     

Temporal proximity and reinforcement sensitivity in multiple schedules

Distributions of reinforcers between two components of multiple variable-interval schedules were varied over a number of conditions. Sensitivity to reinforcement, measured by the exponent of the power function relating ratios of responses in the two components to ratios of reinforcers obtained in the components, did not differ between conditions with 15-s or 60-s component durations. The failure to demonstrate the “short-component effect,” where sensitivity is high for short components, was consistent with reanalysis of previous data. With 60-s components, sensitivity to reinforcement decreased systematically with time since component alternation, and was higher in the first 15-s subinterval of the 60-s component than for the component whose total duration was 15 s. Varying component duration and sampling behavior at different times since component transition may not be equivalent ways of examining the effects of average temporal distance between components.     

Increase in physiological inhibitory control results in better suppression of unwanted memories

Forgetting or suppressing a memory with unwanted content is just as important as remembering a desirable one. In addition to emphasizing the role of inhibitory control in memory suppression processes, neuropsychological studies have indicated that an intentional inhibition targeting a brain area may exert its inhibitory effects in seemingly unrelated areas through a common inhibitory network. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether the suppression of unwanted memories can be strengthened by recruiting an inhibitory task that can be simultaneously performed with a memory suppression task. Therefore, we manipulated the level of urinary urgency-induced inhibition of participants (N = 180) and test its effect on the suppression of unwanted memories using a Think/No-Think (T/NT) task. The results of our study indicated that individuals with high levels of urinary urgency demonstrated greater memory suppression compared to those with low urinary urgency. Findings and their implications are discussed within the context of cognitive and clinical perspectives, and recommendations are made for future research.     

Expertise reversal effect in a pen-tablet-based learning environment: The role of learningcentered emotions in the interplay between learner expertise and task complexity

The study investigated interactions between learner expertise and task complexity evaluated from both cognitive and affective perspectives. One hundred and seventy-three students, both novices and advanced learners, were asked to learn Japanese writing in a pen-tablet-based digital learning environment with varying task complexity levels. Cognitive load and learning-centred emotions were measured at intervals during learning, while writing performance was monitored by runtime tracking. Results indicated that while advanced learners performed better than novices across the range of task complexity, the moderate task complexity was shown to be superior in enhancing performance for both levels of expertise. Results for learning-centred emotions showed that advanced learners reported lower enjoyment and higher frustration when completing the low complexity task, whereas the moderately complex task was reported to be the most enjoyable and less frustrating for these learners. No significant difference in emotions was found across levels of task complexity for novices. Finally, a constructed composite indicator of cognitive-affective efficiency of instructional conditions showed a significant interaction between levels of learner expertise and task complexity primarily caused by affective factors.