AN ANALYSIS OF ERROR-CORRECTION PROCEDURES DURING DISCRIMINATION TRAINING

Mechanisms involved in error-correction procedures during behavioral acquisition were examined. Seven developmentally delayed subjects participated in match-to-sample discrimination training, consisting of three conditions arranged in a multielement design. Correct responses in all conditions were followed by praise and either food or pennies. In the baseline condition (differential reinforcement), an error produced no consequences. In the practice condition, an error was followed by repetition of the trial until a correct response occurred. In the avoidance condition, an error was followed by additional trials consisting of irrelevant stimuli; this condition separated the effects of repeated exposure to the same task from those of negative reinforcement, both of which existed in the practice condition. All 7 subjects made noticeable progress in the baseline condition. However, 5 of the 7 performed better in one of the error-correction conditions: 2 performed better in the practice condition, and 3 performed better in the avoidance condition. These data indicate that error-correction procedures may serve multiple functions and suggest that the practice requirement in this study included both avoidance and stimulus control components. More generally, the data indicate that additional control procedures should be included in acquisition studies to identify the relevant behavioral mechanism(s).     

Substitutability between conditioned and primary reinforcers in discrimination acquisition.

Rats and pigeons were trained on a series of reversals of a conditional simultaneous discrimination. The percentage of reinforcement for correct trials was varied across reversals. When nonreinforced correct trials produced the same feedback as incorrect trials, the number of errors to reach an acquisition criterion was greater for smaller percentages of reinforcement, but the number of reinforcers required was either approximately constant or smaller for the smaller percentages. When a stimulus paired with food (the conditioned reinforcer) was added on nonreinforced correct trials, both measures were substantially decreased. When the same stimulus was presented, but without a history of food pairing, learning rate was similar to when no stimulus was presented on nonreinforced trials. The results provide direct evidence that conditioned reinforcers may substitute, although imperfectly, for a primary reinforcer, and that pairing with the primary reinforcer is a necessary condition for such substitutability to occur.     

大学生社交焦虑成因的研究

探讨大学生社交焦虑的形成原因 ,为临床治疗提供理论基础。方法 :采用社交焦虑量表(IAS) ,个人评价问卷 (PEI) ,自编社交技能和他信问卷对 194名大学生被试进行测试。用SPSS7.0作回归、相关等统计分析。结果 :以自我评价、他信、社交技能为自变量 ,社交焦虑为因变量进行逐步回归分析 ,进入方程的变量为自我评价和社交技能。贡献量分别为 0 .32 7和 0 .0 4 0。以自我评价的 5个子维度 (学业、外貌、爱情、社会交往、与人们谈话 )、社交技能为自变量 ,社交焦虑为因变量进行逐步回归 ,进入回归方程的变量为“与人们交谈”因子、“社会交往”因子和社交技能 ,贡献量分别为 0 .2 96 ,0 .0 71和 0 .0 30。结论 :自我评价和社交技能是造成社交焦虑的重要原因 ,自我评价中的“与人们交谈”和“社会交往”方面是成因中的重要一环     

Implicit learning of semantic preferences of English words by Chinese learners

The aim of the present study was to explore whether Chinese learners could implicitly learn the semantic preferences of novel English words. In training, participants learned four novel verbs and were exposed to a set of verb-noun phrases that included these new words. What the participants were not told was that the use of the verbs depended on the concreteness of the nouns (i.e., the semantic preference rule). In testing, participants were required to choose between two possible verbs (one of which violated the semantic preference rule) for nouns that never occurred in training. The results showed that participants acquired unconscious knowledge of semantic preferences under incidental learning conditions, as measured by verbal reports and structural knowledge attributions. Our results provide further evidence for implicit learning of semantic preferences, suggesting that implicit learning is an important mechanism in the acquisition of L2 collocations.     

语义认知的习得、发展和老化及其神经机制

作为语言系统的重要组成部分, 探究语义认知发展机制及其神经机理对揭示人类语言发展、认知机制有着重要意义。以语义认知能力的习得、发展、老化认知机制为主线, 在系统阐释词汇-语义系统的习得、语义认知能力和策略发展的基础上, 进一步探讨了语义认知老化的认知机制及其神经机理。最后, 围绕儿童和成人的语义认知差异、句法和语义认知老化的差异、语义认知老化的影响因素等问题上进行了思考和展望。     

Statistically Induced Chunking Recall: A Memory-Based Approach to Statistical Learning

The computations involved in statistical learning have long been debated. Here, we build on work suggesting that a basic memory process, chunking, may account for the processing of statistical regularities into larger units. Drawing on methods from the memory literature, we developed a novel paradigm to test statistical learning by leveraging a robust phenomenon observed in serial recall tasks: that short-term memory is fundamentally shaped by long-term distributional learning. In the statistically induced chunking recall (SICR) task, participants are exposed to an artificial language, using a standard statistical learning exposure phase. Afterward, they recall strings of syllables that either follow the statistics of the artificial language or comprise the same syllables presented in a random order. We hypothesized that if individuals had chunked the artificial language into word-like units, then the statistically structured items would be more accurately recalled relative to the random controls. Our results demonstrate that SICR effectively captures learning in both the auditory and visual modalities, with participants displaying significantly improved recall of the statistically structured items, and even recall specific trigram chunks from the input. SICR also exhibits greater test–retest reliability in the auditory modality and sensitivity to individual differences in both modalities than the standard two-alternative forced-choice task. These results thereby provide key empirical support to the chunking account of statistical learning and contribute a valuable new tool to the literature.     

The Role of Animacy in Children's Interpretation of Relative Clauses in English: Evidence From Sentence–Picture Matching and Eye Movements

Subject relative clauses (SRCs) are typically processed more easily than object relative clauses (ORCs), but this difference is diminished by an inanimate head-noun in semantically non-reversible ORCs (“The book that the boy is reading”). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g., “Where is the tractor that the cow is chasing”). In Experiment 1, 48 children (aged 4;5–6;4) and 32 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head-noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head-nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children; however, online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate an SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head-noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy. In Experiment 2, we repeated our design with inanimate (rather than animate) NP2s (e.g., “where is the tractor that the car is following”) to investigate whether our online findings were due to increased visual surprisal at an inanimate as agent, or to similarity-based interference. We again found greater anticipation for an SRC in the inanimate condition, supporting our surprisal hypothesis. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children's interpretation of ORCs, whereas online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data. Overall measures of syntactic comprehension, inhibitory control, and verbal short-term memory and working memory were not predictive of children's accuracy in RC interpretation, with the exception of a positive correlation with a standardized measure of syntactic comprehension in Experiment 1.     

Muscular fitness,motor competence,and processing speed in preschool children

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between muscular fitness and motor competence and processing speed in preschool children. Eighty-four preschool-aged children were recruited and underwent assessments for muscular fitness (muscular endurance and power), motor competence, and then participated in an auditory oddball task. The findings showed that muscular fitness and motor competence were associated with shorter reaction times after controlling for confounding factors. These findings provide tentative support for a positive association between muscular fitness and motor competence and processing speed in preschool children.

abbreviations:

Reaction time (RT); Institutional Review Board (IRB); Basic Motor Ability Test-Revised (BMAT); Body mass index (BMI); Preschool Children Fitness Programme (PCFP); Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC); Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement test (TCAM); Inter-stimulus interval (ISI); Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1); Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)     

Reflections on how color term acquisition is constrained

Compared with object word learning, young children typically find learning color terms to be a difficult linguistic task. In this reflections article, I consider two questions that are fundamental to investigations into the developmental acquisition of color terms. First, I consider what constrains color term acquisition and how stable these constraints are over culture and age. I review recent studies that have identified conceptual, attentional, and linguistic constraints that seemingly operate on the acquisition of color terms compared with object words and the differential acquisition of color terms within a given language. Second, I consider whether these constraints are specific to the acquisition of color terms or whether they reflect more general constraints that operate on other classes of lexical terms such as different abstract property terms.     

Autoshaped head poking in the mouse: a quantitative analysis of the learning curve

In autoshaping experiments, we quantified the acquisition of anticipatory head poking in individual mice, using an algorithm that finds changes in the slope of a cumulative record. In most mice, upward changes in the amount of anticipatory poking per trial were abrupt, and tended to occur at session boundaries, suggesting that the session is as significant a unit of experience as the trial. There were large individual differences in the latency to the onset of vigorous responding. "Asymptotic" performance was unstable; large, bidirectional, and relatively enduring changes were common. Given the characteristics of the individual learning curves, it is unlikely that physiologically meaningful estimates of rate of learning can be extracted from group-average learning curves.