journal article
LitStream Collection
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400632pmid: N/A
This paper is concerned with situations in which one of two possible stimuli is presented to one subject, the sender, while a second subject is required to make one of two responses. The stimuli are not available to the receiver, but the latter can perceive the sender. Successful performance depends on the sender indicating what stimulus is present to the receiver. It is proposed that the development of this form of communication, initially observed with dolphins, can be understood in the light of recent autoshaping research. An experiment demonstrated that pairs of pigeons can learn to perform appropriately in such a situation and provided evidence supporting an autoshaping analysis.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400633pmid: 414291
Fornix-transected monkeys were impaired in recognition memory after brief retention intervals for short lists of either colours or spatial positions. The results were contrasted with the existing evidence in human amnesic patients for a neurologically separate, intact short-term memory system.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400634pmid: 414292
In Experiment I, two monkeys solved a successive visual discrimination in which the four positive stimuli were the visual arrays RIM, LID, RAD and LAM while the four negative stimuli were RID, LIM, RAM and LAD. In Experiment II the same monkeys first learned a discrimination where the positive stimuli were pairs of letters (e.g. OB and AK) while the negative stimulus was the letter I; in a subsequent generalization test with all four possible pairings of the stimulus elements that had been positive during training (i.e. with OB, AK, OK and AB) the monkeys responded more strongly to the pairs that had been present in initial training. These results were discussed in relation to the theoretical analysis of configurational cues in animal discrimination learning and to the mechanism underlying visual discrimination of words by people.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400635pmid: 414293
Two monkeys learned a recall task with colours as the samples and spatial discriminanda at the retention test. The relationship between the sample colours and the retention test discriminanda was such that it was possible to distinguish between errors that were related to the visual similarity of the sample colours and those that were related to the similarity of the recall responses. When errors were induced by lengthening the delay between sample and retention test, they were related to the similarity of the recall responses. But in a comparable recognition memory task with colours, performance was related to the visual similarity of the colours. These results imply that the monkeys recognised the colours directly from a visual trace but recalled them indirectly from a response-coded trace.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400636pmid: N/A
A series of experiments is reported on appetitive higher order conditioning in the pigeon. Experiment I showed that second order autoshaping can be produced by pairing a neutral keylight with a keylight of another colour, previously paired with food. Experiment II employed an omission procedure to show that second order autoshaping is a consequence of the contingency between first and second order stimuli. In Experiment III, extinction of responding to the first order stimulus was shown to reduce responding to the second order stimulus. Experiments IV and V showed firstly that this reduction is not due to generalization of extinction, and secondly that second order key pecks may be produced in the absence of any pecking to the first order stimulus. The results suggest that second order autoshaping is based largely on a direct association between the first and second order stimuli.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400637pmid: N/A
It is argued that the observed variability of responding in reasoning tasks might usefully be described by mathematical models based on stochastic processes. The data of a number of experiments employing Wason's selection task are reanalysed and it is shown that selection probabilities of individual cards are statistically independent. This is consistent with a class of simple stochastic models and renders conventional “insight” explanations of the data unparsi-monious.A provisional stochastic model is formulated and subjected to a limited parametric test with reasonably satisfactory results. Some general directions for future research along these lines are suggested.
Phillips, W. A.; Christie, D. F. M.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400638pmid: 601182
It is often claimed that visualizing and perceiving interfere with each other because they compete for special purpose visual processing resources. The arguments for this view (e.g. Brooks, 1967, 1968) are criticised. Five experiments are then reported which attempt to determine whether specific processing activities interfere with the visualization of novel abstract patterns. Visualization was greatly interfered with by adding five digits but not by reading them. Presentation modality of the digits did not affect the interference they caused. When the intervening activity involved processing patterns similar to those being visualized, the amount of interference depended upon whether the subject had to form and use representations that outlived the icon. Perception caused interference when it involved formation of a maintainable representation, but not when it required only sensory storage.It is concluded that visualization requires general purpose resources, and that interference between visualization and perception could be due to competition for these resources.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400639pmid: N/A
In Experiment I two groups of 11 men performed a continuous visual input/manual output task simultaneously with a two-choice tone identification task. One group responded vocally to the tones; one group responded with the hand not involved in the continuous tracking task. In either perceptual or stimulus uncertainty terms the two combinations were identical; the only difference between them was the modality of the two-choice responses. The continuous task was performed significantly worse when the two-choice responses were manual. The probability of response production on the continuous task was affected by the production of manual responses but not by the production of vocal responses. It was concluded that although the two manual responses were produced by a single limited capacity process, the manual and vocal responses were produced by independent processes. In Experiment II the same manual tracking task was combined with a mental arithmetic task at two levels of difficulty. Tracking performance was independent of the difficulty of the arithmetic task. These results support a multi-processor approach to attention as opposed to single channel models. Results of dual task studies which have used only one pair of response modalities are re-examined in the light of the response modality effect found in Experiment I.
doi: 10.1080/14640747708400640pmid: N/A
An experiment is reported which establishes that inclusive disjunction arguments embedded in concrete content are not always easier to reason with than those involving abstract content. The subjects had to assess conclusions drawn from pairs of premises such as “Either Joan is intelligent or she is rich (or both); Joan is intelligent” or “Either Joan is intelligent or she is rich (or both); Joan is not intelligent”. The terms in the disjunctive premise were varied systematically across three content dimensions (i.e. compatible, abstract and contradictory). An analysis of variance revealed significant differences according to both principle of inference and type of content, and a significant interaction between these factors. The results demonstrated that semantically incompatible premise content had a marked influence on comprehension of inclusive disjunction reasoning schemes. The response patterns suggest that these reasoning schemes invited erroneous judgments based on other logical connectives.
Showing 1 to 10 of 21 Articles