Discrimination learning with and without “errors”

Responses to S− (“errors”) are not a necessary condition for the formation of an operant discrimination of color. Errors do not occur if discrimination training begins early in conditioning and if S+ and S− initially differ with respect to brightness, duration and wavelength. After training starts, S−'s duration and brightness is progressively increased until S+ and S− differ only with respect to wavelength. Errors do occur if training starts after much conditioning in the presence of S+ has occurred or if S+ and S− differ only with respect to wavelength throughout training. Performance following discrimination learning without errors lacks three characteristics that are found following learning with errors. Only those birds that learned the discrimination with errors showed (1) “emotional” responses in the presence of S−, (2) an increase in the rate (or a decrease in the latency) of its response to S+, and (3) occasional bursts of responses to S−.     

Serial learning in the pigeon.

Three pigeons learned to peck four colors in a particular sequence, regardless of how these colors were positioned on four response keys and without feedback following each response. This demonstrates that serial learning is possible in subprimate animals.     

Serial expertise of rhesus macaques

Here we describe the development of serial expertise in 4 experimentally naive rhesus monkeys that learned, by trial and error, the correct order in which to respond to 3-, 4-, and 7-item lists of arbitrarily selected photographs. The probabilities of guessing the correct sequence on 3-, 4-, and 7-item lists were, respectively, 1/6, 1/24, and 1/5040. Each monkey became progressively more efficient at determining the correct order in which to respond on new lists. During subsequent testing, the subjects were presented with all possible pairs of the 28 items used to construct the four 7-item lists (excluding pairs of items that occupied the same ordinal position in different lists). Subjects responded to pairs from different lists in the correct order 91% of the time on the first trials on which these pairs were presented. These features of subjects' performance, which cannot be attributed to procedural memory, satisfy two criteria of declarative memory: rapid acquisition of new knowledge and flexible application of existing knowledge to a new problem.     

視、听語文材料同时識記的干扰与相对优势

問題識記时若有两种或多种感觉通道同时活动,可能彼此助长,也可能相互干扰。这对于了解識記时神經中枢各部分的活动与相互影响可能有一定的启发意义。视、听两种感觉通道在学习时最常应用,两种感觉通道可以同时或先后接受同一的刺激物,也可接受不同的刺激物。以往关于比較視、听材料識記效果的研究較多,結果指出,两种感觉材料的識記效果一般难分高低,主要决定于材料的性貭与被試的經驗等条件。     

体育馆比赛厅观众席距离与视觉辨认的关系

問題 深入地探討体育館內观众席的视觉效果問題,是保証观众“看得好”的首要因素,是合理分布观众席、决定比賽厅平面形式(如圓形、椭圓形、方形、矩形等)的必备前提。决定观众席视觉效果的两大因素是观察距离及观察方位。关于这两个問題,国內外先后都进行过研究,但距离、方位与观众席分区方法的关系等問題,一般多局限在理論方面的討論,不能完全符合于实际情况。要对这些問題进行更深入的探討,必需进行视知觉心理学方面的实驗和研究,非仅靠建筑学知識所能解决,本研究卽试图通过知觉心理学的研究方法,对体育館比賽厅观众席距場地距离与視觉辨认的关系进行一些探索。     

The generation effect in monkeys

How well one retains new information depends on how actively it is processed during learning. Active attempts to retrieve information from memory result in more learning than passive observation of the same information (the generation effect). Here, we present evidence for the generation effect in monkeys. Subjects were trained to respond to five-item lists of photographs in a particular order. On some lists, they could request "hints" to guide their behavior; on others, they had to generate the correct order from memory. Training with hints resulted in high levels of initial performance, but accuracy dropped precipitously when the hints were removed on the criterion test. Training without hints led to relatively poor initial performance, but accuracy increased steadily and remained high on the criterion test.     

KNOWLEDGE OF THE ORDINAL POSITION OF LIST ITEMS IN RHESUS MONKEYS

Abstract —What is learned during mastery of a serial task: associations between adjacent and remote items, associations between an item and its ordinal position, or both? A dear answer to this question is lacking in the literature on human serial memory because it is difficult to control for a "naive" subject's linguistic competence and extensive experience with serial tasks. In this article, we present evidence that rhesus monkeys encode the ordinal positions of items of an arbitrary list when there is no requirement to do so. First, monkeys learned four nonverbal lists (1–4). each containing four novel items (photographs of natural objects). The monkeys then learned four 4-item lists that were derived exclusively and exhaustively from Lists 1 through 4, one item from each list. On two derived lists, each item s original ordinal position was maintained. Those lists were acquired with virtually no errors. The two remaining derived lists, on which the original ordinal position of each item was changed, were as difficult to learn as novel lists. The immediate acquisition of lists on which ordinal position was maintained shows that knowledge of ordinal position can develop without the benefit of language, extensive list-learning experience, or explicit instruction to encode ordinal information.     

On the minimal conditions for the development of a peak-shift and inhibitory stimulus control

Failures to obtain a peak-shift and inhibitory stimulus control following massed extinction in the presence of intra- and interdimensional stimuli confirm earlier results reported by Honig, Thomas, and Guttman (1959) and by Weisman and Palmer (1969). Peak-shifts and inhibitory stimulus control were observed when any of the following procedures intervened for 3 min between massed extinction and generalization testing: (1) S+ presented, responding reinforced; (2) S+ presented, responding not reinforced; or, (3) noncontingent food presented in the presence of a dark key. Behavioral contrast was shown not to be a necessary antecedent for the occurrence of peak-shift or inhibitory stimulus control.     

Autoshaping, random control, and omission training in the rat

The role of the stimulus-reinforcer contingency in the development and maintenance of lever contact responding was studied in hooded rats. In Experiment I, three groups of experimentally naive rats were trained either on autoshaping, omission training, or a random-control procedure. Subjects trained by the autoshaping procedure responded more consistently than did either random-control or omission-trained subjects. The probability of at least one lever contact per trial was slightly higher in subjects trained by the omission procedure than by the random-control procedure. However, these differences were not maintained during extended training, nor were they evident in total lever-contact frequencies. When omission and random-control subjects were switched to the autoshaping condition, lever contacts increased in all animals, but a pronounced retardation was observed in omission subjects relative to the random-control subjects. In addition, subjects originally exposed to the random-control procedure, and later switched to autoshaping, acquired more rapidly than naive subjects that were exposed only on the autoshaping procedure. In Experiment II, subjects originally trained by an autoshaping procedure were exposed either to an omission, a random-control, or an extinction procedure. No differences were observed among the groups either in the rate at which lever contacts decreased or in the frequency of lever contacts at the end of training. These data implicate prior experience in the interpretation of omission-training effects and suggest limitations in the influence of stimulus-reinforcer relations in autoshaping.