Manipulations to practice organization of golf putting skills through interleaved matched or mismatched practice with a partner

There is some evidence that alternating physical and observational practice with a partner for the same skill can benefit learning compared to practice alone. What has not been studied is whether a partner's interleaved practice impacts multi-skill learning, when the partner either matches or mismatches their partner’s skill. Here we manipulated partners’ practice schedules of two golf putting skills. Partners practiced the same (“matched”) or different skills in alternation (“mismatched”). Based on previous research where interleaved demonstrations have induced beneficial contextual interference effects, we hypothesized that mismatching a partner on consecutive trials should also promote a similar type of interference in practice, which ultimately aids learning. A third control group was tested, where only one partner practiced while the other observed. All groups practiced for two days, with individual retention tests at the start of day 2 and one week later. Taking turns practicing and observing a partner did not benefit learning compared to the control, pure physical practice group and the matched and mismatched groups did not differ in outcomes. There was, however, evidence that partners were adapting their actions (i.e., compensating for over or undershooting of the target) based on the shots of their partner, in a similar manner to how they were adapting to their own errors. Thus, although partners were influencing each other’s performance, it was not ultimately to the benefit (or cost) of overall learning. Partner-mismatching of skills through alternating practice was not sufficient to promote interference in practice and ultimately promote learning.     

Reducing negative emotional memories by retroactive interference

Because negative emotional memories are often disruptive, we conducted two experiments to reduce these memories by using a retroactive interference (RI) paradigm. In both experiments, participants were presented with highly negative pictures (List 1) followed by highly negative, moderately negative, or neutral pictures (List 2) or a rest period. Then, following a filler task, participants took a surprise free recall test, recalling pictures from List 1 in Experiment 1 and from both List 1 and List 2 in Experiment 2. In both experiments, recall of List 1 was reduced by List 2, indicating that RI was present. Furthermore, in Experiment 1, RI was similar between moderately negative and highly negative List 2 whereas in Experiment 2, RI was greater for highly negative List 2 than moderately negative List 2. These results showed that RI can be used to reduce negative emotional memories by making these memories inaccessible.     

Cancelling discrete and stopping ongoing rhythmic movements: Do they involve the same process of motor inhibition?

Motor inhibition is considered to be an important process of executive control and to be implicated in numerous activities in order to cancel prepared actions and, supposedly, to suppress ongoing ones. Usually, it is evaluated using a “stop-signal task” in which participants have to inhibit prepared discrete movements. However, it is unknown whether other movement types involve the same inhibition process. We therefore investigated whether the inhibition process for discrete movements is involved in stopping ongoing rhythmic movements as well.Twenty healthy adults performed two counterbalanced tasks. The first task was used to estimate the stop-signal reaction time (SSRTd) needed to inhibit prepared discrete key-pressing movements. In the second task, participants drew graphic patterns on a tablet and had to stop the movement when a stop-signal occurred. We calculated the rhythmic stop signal-reaction time as the time needed to initiate stopping such ongoing rhythmic movement (SSRTr) and the same latency relative to the period of the rhythmic movement (relSSRTr). We measured these delays under different movement frequencies and motor coordination conditions and further investigated whether they varied as a function of several parameters of the rhythmic movements (speed, mean and variance of the relative phase, and movement phase at several time events).We found no correlation between inhibition measures in the two tasks. In contrast, generalized linear models showed a moderate yet significant influence of the motion parameters on the inhibition of ongoing rhythmic movements. We therefore conclude that the motor inhibition processes involved in cancelling prepared discrete movements and stopping ongoing rhythmic movements are dissimilar.     

Production blocking and idea generation: Does blocking interfere with cognitive processes?

Production blocking (group members must take turns expressing their ideas) is an important cause of productivity loss in brainstorming groups. However, it is not yet clear why production blocking has this detrimental effect. We hypothesized that delays between the generation and articulation of ideas, arising when group members wait for their turns, interfere with the cognitive process of generating ideas. In three experiments, production blocking was simulated for individuals working at computer terminals. Production blocking interfered with idea generation in two ways. First, it disrupted the organization of idea generation when delays were relatively long. Second, it reduced the flexibility of idea generation when delays were unpredictable. Implications for group information processing are discussed.     

Relation of Behavioral and Psychological Involvement to a New Four-Factor Conceptualization of Work-Family Interference

The relation of role involvement to work-family interference has had inconsistent results in past research. By paying closer conceptual attention to the measurement of role involvement and work-family interference, this study addresses past inconsistent findings. First, a new four-factor measure of work-family interference is proposed that incorporates the dimension of externally generated versus internally generated conflict, which has been ignored in previous research. Second, role involvement is considered from both a behavioral and a psychological perspective. Data were obtained from a sample of 534 employed adults with families. The results suggest that a mapping of behavioral and psychological involvement to specific dimensions of external and internal work- family interference appears to be important when examining the general relation of role involvement to work-family interference.     

Slow and steady? Strategic adjustments in response caution are moderately reliable and correlate across tasks

Speed-accuracy trade-offs are often considered a confound in speeded choice tasks, but individual differences in strategy have been linked to personality and brain structure. We ask whether strategic adjustments in response caution are reliable, and whether they correlate across tasks and with impulsivity traits. In Study 1, participants performed Eriksen flanker and Stroop tasks in two sessions four weeks apart. We manipulated response caution by emphasising speed or accuracy. We fit the diffusion model for conflict tasks and correlated the change in boundary (accuracy – speed) across session and task. We observed moderate test-retest reliability, and medium to large correlations across tasks. We replicated this between-task correlation in Study 2 using flanker and perceptual decision tasks. We found no consistent correlations with impulsivity. Though moderate reliability poses a challenge for researchers interested in stable traits, consistent correlation between tasks indicates there are meaningful individual differences in the speed-accuracy trade-off.     

Asymmetric interference in 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds' sequential category learning

Three‐ to 4‐month‐old infants show asymmetric exclusivity in the acquisition of cat and dog perceptual categories. The cat perceptual category excludes dog exemplars, but the dog perceptual category does not exclude cat exemplars. We describe a connectionist autoencoder model of perceptual categorization that shows the same asymmetries as infants. The model predicts the presence of asymmetric retroactive interference when infants acquire cat and dog categories sequentially. A subsequent experiment conducted with 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds verifies the predicted pattern of looking time behaviors. We argue that bottom‐up, associative learning systems with distributed representations are appropriate for modeling the operation of short‐term visual memory in early perceptual category learning.     

A joint modeling framework of responses and response times to assess learning outcomes

Abstract

A general modeling framework of response accuracy and response times is proposed to track skill acquisition and provide additional diagnostic information on the change of latent speed in a learning environment. This framework consists of two types of models: a dynamic response model that captures the response accuracy and the change of discrete latent attribute profile upon factors such as practice, intervention effects, and other latent and observable covariates, and a dynamic response time model that describes the change of the continuous response latency due to change of latent attribute profile. These two types of models are connected through a parameter, describing the change rate of the latent speed through the learning process, and a covariate defined as a function of the latent attribute profile. A Bayesian estimation procedure is developed to calibrate the model parameters and measure the latent variables. The estimation algorithm is evaluated through several simulation studies under various conditions. The proposed models are applied to a real data set collected through a spatial rotation diagnostic assessment paired with learning tools.     

Evidence of rapid correlation‐based perceptual category learning by 4‐month‐olds

Young infants are very sensitive to feature distribution information in the environment. However, existing work suggests that they do not make use of correlation information to form certain perceptual categories until at least 7 months of age. We suggest that the failure to use correlation information is a by‐product of familiarization procedures that encourage infants to over encode individual exemplars rather than relations across exemplars. By changing the exemplar presentation regime to one in which exemplars are rapidly (2 s durations) and repeatedly presented we find that 4‐month‐olds can form perceptual categories on the basis of feature correlation information. In addition, this ability emerges rapidly between 114 and 134 days. We argue that the ability to process correlation information is present very early on but that the demonstration of that ability in categorization tasks is mediated by the demands of the task the infant is tested with. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.