The learned predictiveness effect or LPE is the finding that when people learn that certain cues are reliable predictors of an outcome in an initial stage of training (phase 1), they exhibit a learning bias in favor of these cues in a subsequent training involving new outcomes (phase 2) despite all cues being equally reliable in phase 2. In…

GIVEN THE TASK OF LEARNING A SERIES OF RANDOMLY ORDERED MEANINGFUL ITEMS, MOST SUBJECTS (SS) IMPOSE SOME ORGANIZATION ON THE MATERIAL DURING THE PROCESS OF LEARNING. AN EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM IS DESCRIBED WHICH PERMITS THE OBJECTIVE SCORING OF EACH S'S SUBJECTIVE ORGANIZATION OF THE MATERIAL ON EACH LEARNING TRIAL. THE CENTRAL FEATURE OF THE…

Subjects were asked to decide if a pair of visually presented letter strings were both words (lexical decision task). Results supported an automatic spread of excitation model of associative facilitation. (Editor/RK)

In 3 experiments, young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs and were given confidence-rated item and associative recognition tests. Several different models of recognition were fit to the confidence-rating data using techniques described by S. Macho (2002, 2004). Concordant with previous findings, item recognition data were best…