Visual objects are often defined by multiple features. Therefore, learning novel objects entails learning feature conjunctions. Visual cortex is organized into distinct anatomical compartments, each of which is devoted to processing a single feature. A prime example are neurons purely selective to color and orientation, respectively. However,…

Learning to associate specific objects with value contributes to the human's adaptive behavior. However, the intrinsic nature of associative memory posits a challenge that newly learned associations may interfere with the old ones if they share common features (e.g., a reward). In the present study, we conducted a set of behavioral experiments and…

Two experiments examined biases in selective attention during contextual cuing of visual search. When participants were instructed to search for a target of a particular color, overt attention (as measured by the location of fixations) was biased strongly toward distractors presented in that same color. However, when participants searched for…

We examined the contribution of rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time, pause time, and pause time consistency) to reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling in a sample of 257 German children (139 boys, 118 girls; M[subscript age] = 5.60 years, SD = 0.31) followed from kindergarten to Grade 1. In kindergarten,…

Episodic memories are not veridical records of our lives, but rather are better described as organized summaries of experience. Theories and empirical research suggest that shifts in perceptual, temporal, and semantic information lead to a chunking of our continuous experiences into segments, or "events." However, the consequences of…

Three experiments investigated the learning of simple associations in a color-word contingency task. Participants responded manually to the print colors of 3 words, with each word associated strongly to 1 of the 3 colors and weakly to the other 2 colors. Despite the words being irrelevant, response times to high-contingency stimuli and to…

Variability is prevalent in early language acquisition, but, whether it supports or hinders learning is unclear; while target variability has been shown to facilitate word learning, variability in competitor items has been shown to make the task harder. Here, we tested whether background variability could boost learning in a referent selection…

Task-cuing experiments are usually intended to explore control of task set. But when small stimulus sets are used, they plausibly afford learning of the response associated with a combination of cue and stimulus, without reference to tasks. In 3 experiments we presented the typical trials of a task-cuing experiment: a cue (colored shape) followed,…

A sophisticated form of nonelemental learning is provided by occasion setting. In this paradigm, animals learn to disambiguate an uncertain conditioned stimulus using alternative stimuli that do not enter into direct association with the unconditioned stimulus. For instance, animals may learn to discriminate odor rewarded from odor nonrewarded…

The conflict monitoring account posits that globally high levels of conflict trigger engagement of top-down control; however, recent findings point to the mercurial nature of top-down control in high conflict contexts. The current study examined the potential moderating effect of associative learning on conflict-triggered top-down control…

How do the characteristics of sounds influence the allocation of visual-spatial attention? Natural sounds typically change in frequency. Here we demonstrate that the direction of frequency change guides visual-spatial attention more strongly than the average or ending frequency, and provide evidence suggesting that this cross-modal effect may be…

A huge set of focused attention experiments show that when presented with color words printed in color, observers report the ink color faster if the carrier word is the name of the color rather than the name of an alternative color, the Stroop effect. There is also a large number (although not so numerous as the Stroop task) of so-called…

The goal of this study was to investigate whether behavioural and physiological consequences of synaesthesia can be elicited by training specific letter-colour associations. Towards this goal 20 non-synaesthetic individuals were trained for 10 min on 7 consecutive days to associate four different letters with four specific colours. After training,…

Adaptive behavior in dynamic environments critically depends on the ability to learn rapidly and flexibly from the outcomes of prior choices. In social environments, facial expressions of emotion often serve as performance feedback and thereby guide declarative learning. Abundant evidence implicates beta-noradrenergic signaling in the modulatory…

Three computer based experiments, testing human participants in a non-immersive virtual watermaze task, used a blocking design to assess whether two sets of geometric cues would compete in a manner described by associative models of learning. In stage 1, participants were required to discriminate between visually distinct platforms. In stage 2,…