Animal studies suggest that time delay between acquisition and retrieval of contextual anxiety increases generalization. Moreover, such generalization is prevented by preexposure to the context (CTX), presumably due to an improved representation of such context. We investigated whether preexposure and time-passing modulate generalization of…

Over the last three decades, there has been increased attention on the collection and interpretation of "response processing data" to inform claims of learners' knowledge and skills (e.g., see Ercikan et al., 2010; Kobrin & Young, 2003; see also, Leighton, 2004). Response processing data are perhaps most consequential in the…

Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford's alternate uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of…

Early studies of human memory suggest that adherence to a known structural regularity (e.g., orthographic regularity) benefits memory for an otherwise novel stimulus (e.g., G. A. Miller, 1958). However, a more recent study suggests that structural regularity can lead to an increase in false-positive responses on recognition memory tests (B. W. A.…

This review of research discusses how children with autism may acquire equivalence classes after learning to supply a common oral name to each stimulus in a potential class. A proposed methodology for researching referent naming and class formation, analysis of stimulus classes, and generalization is offered. (CR)

This investigation compares overt judgments about tenable hypotheses to choices in a concept identification task, as a function of stimulus similarity on successive trials. Two mathematical models are tested: (a) A 1-element local consistency version of Restle's concept identification model and (b) the same model with two additional passive states…

Two experiments examined pigeons' generalization to intermediate forms following training of concept discriminations. In Experiment 1, the training stimuli were sets of images of dogs and cats, and the transfer stimuli were head/body chimeras, which humans tend to categorize more readily in terms of the head part rather than the body part. In…

Projects that soon a complete mechanistic understanding of simple forms of learning will be available. Describes some of the recent advances in neuroscience and psychology in understanding the changes in neural circuits that occur during certain behavioral situations. Suggests that learning involves the activation of second messenger systems. (TW)

In man-computer communication, the computer responds only as it is programed to respond. A human's response is more complicated because it depends on the "pre-programed" ways that humans process information. The three functions a man performs on received information are conservation (in which messages are retained whole), reduction (in which…